<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<meta charset="UTF-8">
<title>i looked over it and i ached by CoaxionUnlimited</title>
<style type="text/css">

body { background-color: #ffffff; }
.CI {
text-align:center;
margin-top:0px;
margin-bottom:0px;
padding:0px;
}
.center   {text-align: center;}
.cover    {text-align: center;}
.full     {width: 100%; }
.quarter  {width: 25%; }
.smcap    {font-variant: small-caps;}
.u        {text-decoration: underline;}
.bold     {font-weight: bold;}
</style>
</head>
<body>
<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/30149787">i looked over it and i ached</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/CoaxionUnlimited/pseuds/CoaxionUnlimited'>CoaxionUnlimited</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Mass Effect Trilogy</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alternate Universe - Canon, Angst, Canon Compliant, Canon-Typical Body Horror, Canonical Character Death, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, F/M, Fake Marriage, Gen, Humor, Hurt/Comfort, I swear this is a little more lighthearted than the tags make it sound, Mental Health Issues, Mutual Pining, Non-Linear Narrative, POV Alternating, POV Outsider, Roleswap, Shepard and Anderson swapping does change some character dynamics, Shepard/Saren is the most important relationship, Unhappy Ending, Unhealthy Relationships, Unreliable Narrator, Unresolved Romantic Tension, Unresolved Sexual Tension, Well - Freeform, at least for the first chapter, but it's Anderson and Shepard whose roles swap, but the gen relationships do get significant (i.e. tag-worthy) amounts of screentime, more like unreliable narratorS, nobody has the whole story here, not Shepard and Saren, of the two unhealthy people trying to have a relationship variety, plotwise at least, sadly the fake marriage is not a major plot point, they don't actually make it to lovers, though it's more like enemies to frienemies to..., though unfortunately they're both assholes about it, which works out because there's no way to portmanteau enemies and lovers</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-03-22</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-03-29</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-15 19:07:51</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Major Character Death</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>2</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>20,218</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/30149787</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/CoaxionUnlimited/pseuds/CoaxionUnlimited</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>In the late 2170s, David Anderson's a rising star, newly graduated from the N7 Academy and looking to make his mark on the galaxy. He decides to serve on the SSV Tokyo, captained by the enigmatic war hero named Shepard. </p><p>He knew that there would be intense combat and hard choices ahead of him, but he was definitely not prepared to get dragged into the tragedy that's been building between his mentor and the Spectre Saren Arterius. </p><p>(or, two assholes play a game of het chicken, which ends in multiple fatalities and also the apocalypse)</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>David Anderson &amp; Nihlus Kryik, Female Shepard &amp; David Anderson, Saren Arterius/Female Shepard</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>14</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>25</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>Spectre Requisitions 2021</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. Chapter 1</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><ul class="associations">
      <li>For <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/YourLocalPriestess/gifts">YourLocalPriestess</a>.</li>



    </ul><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Check the end notes for chapter warnings. I hope you enjoy this, YourLocalPriestess - I saw your favorite tropelist and was like, oh man, I've wanted to write that Shepard/Saren fic for AGES.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The first time David Anderson meets Shepard, he’s a cocky kid fresh out of N7, up to his neck in people politely begging him to serve on their ships.</p><p>It’s kind of going to his head.</p><p>Captain Shepard is one of the most decorated officers in the Alliance Navy, but half of the other ones have shown up to offer him positions and so running into her in the N7 dorms doesn’t feel particularly special. The only thing that’s really different at first is that she - well, stands out.</p><p>Most Alliance officers are practically dressed and neatly put together, serious and stern. Shepard’s dyed her hair a red so bright it practically glows against the severe gray of the walls. And she’s - well, angular. Her face is sharp and triangular, with narrow eyes and protruding cheekbones and thin lips. He wouldn’t call the effect pretty (especially since she’s nearly two decades older than him), but it’s certainly striking. Hard to look away from.</p><p>He gets the impression she’s put some work into keeping it that way.</p><p>But lunch started fifteen minutes ago, and Anderson’s dealt with what feels like hundreds of job offers today. He’s not in a patient mood, not even for heroes. He folds his arms across his chest, and asks, with the bare minimum of politeness,</p><p>“With all due respect, ma’am, can you just get to the pitch?”</p><p>“The pitch?” Shepard raises her eyebrows at him.</p><p>“You know. Why I should work on your ship. What kind of exciting promotion opportunities you’ve got in store for me.” Anderson thinks longingly of the meatballs they’re serving in the cafeteria.</p><p>Shepard smiles at him, knife-edged and certain.</p><p>———</p><p>In 2165, Commander Carolina Shepard was sent on a mission to the Terminus Systems, accompanied by Saren Arterius, who was informally evaluating her for Spectre candidacy.</p><p>She had been widowed barely two weeks prior, a fact that she’d spent a significant number of favors keeping from the press. It was a good decision in hindsight, because her rejection from the Spectres quickly escalated into a vicious scandal.</p><p>No conclusion was released about why the mission went as badly as it did and no formal punishment was ever given. This was officially due to lack of evidence - Shepard’s testimony contradicted Saren’s in several places. Under ordinary circumstances, the Council would have unilaterally believed their agent’s version of events. But witnesses brought in to corroborate almost universally agreed with Shepard’s version of the story. This would have been damning except for one thing: no one but Saren and Shepard survived the burning of the refinery.</p><p>Anyone who saw the events that lead up to that fateful explosion (and the death of Kahlee Sanders) took their story to the grave.</p><p>The investigation was further muddied by politics - specifically, Saren’s politics. Shepard drew attention to his public activism against human expansion, and all but accused the Council of deliberately sabotaging humanity’s play for a Spectre. Saren, in turn, outright said she was crying xenophobia in order to hide her own incompetence.</p><p>Lines were drawn. Between Saren and Shepard’s vicious arguments any time they were in a room together, the members of non-Council races who remembered similar almost-sabotage of their own Spectre candidates, and Saren’s impeccable record and consequent staunch supporters within the Citadel embassies, everyone with enough clearance to know about the case had an opinion and every opinion was tenaciously held. After the case was closed, many joked that it had been settled not because there was nothing else to find, but because they wanted the embassies to be habitable again.</p><p>In the end, the compromise was simple. Humanity received a few trade concessions, but their bid for a human Spectre was closed. If they were to try again, it would have to be with a different candidate.</p><p>———</p><p>A few years, a couple more legal threats from Saren, at least one instance of retaliation which proved that said turian had <em>no</em> sense of humor, and Shepard was heading into work on Christmas day. The human embassy wasn’t entirely deserted, but paid time off was paid time off, whether or not you had to lie about religious obligations to get it.</p><p>Shepard doesn’t have anyone to spend the leave with (the psychologists say that isolating yourself from friends and family is not a healthy way to cope with being a widow, but military psych is all bullshit) and even if she did she’d rather take the time off in February for the new year. So she’s here, delivering end of year reports to the embassy for lack of any other work.</p><p>Kahoku’s in a meeting at the Citadel Tower - less because he wants to work and more because he’s too honest to claim that he’s Christian, if she knows him. He’s offered to join her for lunch, so she’s taken a cab over. She might catch the last couple minutes of his meeting, depending on her luck. He’s been on a kick about networking lately, it’d make his day to introduce her to some of his politician friends.</p><p>But.</p><p>Halfway up one of the tower staircases, she catches sight of Saren. She might have picked a fight - it’d have been more entertaining than the politicians - but he looks terrible. Now, Shepard’s been in the military since she was eighteen. She fought in the First Contact War, she spent nearly six years after that in black ops; her scruples about kicking a turian when he’s down are about as substantial as the Consort’s underwear.</p><p>But.</p><p>Saren doesn’t look like he’s having a bad day in the civilian sense, where you break up with your girlfriend or get yelled at your boss. He looks the flavor of bad that comes from spending too long looking down the barrel of a gun. There’s scorch marks on his armor, dried bloodstains in green and purple on his gloves. He’s doing the thousand yard stare up the staircase, and his shoulders are slumped out of perfect turian parade rest for the first time since she’s met him.</p><p>The problem is, this is a familiar look. Shepard did her time in black ops, she knows deeply and intimately how it feels to come home after a too long mission, after too many missions back to back, and know that you’ll report, sleep, and get sent out again. She knows the slow, sandpaper damage it does to kill and kill again, with nothing in between.</p><p>She’d just never thought that it’d happen to <em>Saren</em>.</p><p>Shepard hesitates. Argues with herself. Loses. And finally, pulls out her omni-tool.</p><p>CS: kakohu<br/>
CS: *kahoku<br/>
CS: u in w/counicl<br/>
BK: Yes<br/>
BK: Why?<br/>
CS: hw long can u drag meeting out<br/>
BK: … Why?<br/>
CS: will owe u favor<br/>
CS: + bring lunch<br/>
BK: I can give you thirty minutes.<br/>
BK: An hour if you bring me takeout from the Asari place on Zakera 26.<br/>
CS: done<br/>
</p><p>The conversation takes just long enough for her to snag a cup of shitty dextro coffee from the nearest breakroom. It’s not long enough for her to come up with a tactically sound way to approach Saren, but she’s got the twin advantages of surprise and caffeine which should give her enough of an edge to come out unstabbed.</p><p>She makes a thoroughly unprofessional racket going up the stairs, and cuts off Saren’s smartass comment by depositing the coffee in one of his hands. And while he’s visibly still trying to process that, she hooks her arm through his unoccupied elbow (lightly, but positioned for a smooth transition into a throw - no sense taking chances) and starts dragging him up the stairs.</p><p>It takes him a full thirty seconds to get a sentence out of the spluttering. Shepard would love to attribute that to the sheer cunning of her plan, but it probably has more to do with exhaustion.</p><p>“Is this poisoned?” Is what Saren finally comes up with. She resists the urge to tsk at him, it’s a weak accusation.</p><p>“I wouldn’t poison you in the middle of the Council tower,” Shepard replies, steering him through the closest door and into one of the human diplomatic floors. “Too many witnesses.”</p><p>Saren’s still eying the coffee like it might bite him, so she adds, “It’s even dextro - don’t know how you drink that shit, it smells like paint thinner.”</p><p>He brings it up to his face, clearly sniffing it for something. She resists the urge to roll her eyes, and instead lets go of his arm for a second to unlock one of the breakrooms. She pushes him toward one of the couches and steps back, watches with a (quickly-repressed) pang as he practically crumples onto it, his other hand coming up to cup the coffee like it’s some kind of lifeline.</p><p>“The council’s running late,” she says briskly, and then rolls her eyes at his expression. “Oh, don’t look at me like that. You’re obviously delivering a mission report. Anyways, you’ve got about fifty minutes and it’s a human holiday, no one’s coming in here.” She gestures at the couch. “Nap.”</p><p>“So you can stab me when I fall asleep?” Saren snaps, tone acidic. “No, thank you.”</p><p>It’s like pulling goddamn teeth. “Then lie down and shut your eyes,” she retorts. “You look like shit.”</p><p>“I don’t even have proof that the Council is delayed.” Indignation makes him sit up straighter, look more like himself. Shepard shoves her relief to the back of her mind and rolls her eyes. She brings up the message history on her omni-tool, and shoves it in his face.</p><p>“See?” Shepard says, with exaggerated patience. “Not lying. And if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got to get that takeout.”</p><p>She turns on her heel and stalks out of the room.</p><p>That’s the end of it, she thinks. They’ll both pretend this never happened and she can go back to hating him without any uncomfortable empathy getting in the way.</p><p>———</p><p>That’s not the end of it.</p><p>Of course it’s not the end of it - why would that be the end of it? If there is any sort of cosmic force influencing the fate of the galaxy, it doesn’t like Shepard enough for that to be the end of anything.</p><p>The next time Shepard runs across Saren on the Citadel, he’s a couple badly timed movements away from bleeding out.</p><p>Her first reaction, on seeing him leaning up against a shady corner when she makes her way down the wards to the only halfway authentic Chinese restaurant on the Citadel, is not compassion or even pity. Instead, the part of her mind that hardened during the First Contact War runs a threat assessment. He’s favoring his left side, heavily, a hand pressed over his side. It’s too dark to make out the blood, but she knows the half-hunched posture of someone with a major injury. She’s studied enough turian anatomy to guess that he’s nicked one of several arteries in the vulnerable junction between turian hips and their vaguely conical chest area, one of the least armored areas on a turian body.</p><p>Turian blood clots faster than human blood, if only because they have less of it by volume, but Saren has clearly lost enough to weaken him. A solid kick, a little bit of bladework, and she could take him out. Easy.</p><p>Then, Saren looks up at her, his pale eyes gleaming in the half-light of the wards and Shepard’s brain kicks into gear.</p><p>Killing him wouldn’t be wise - she might get away with it, but there’d be no benefit to the Alliance. Besides, she tries not to be the type of person who kills people over personal grievances.</p><p>There was, of course, no real benefit to helping him either. No one would know, if she left him to bleed out in this alley.</p><p>But she’s done her fair share of time pressing on gunshot wounds in dark alleys, and her fair share of watching people hurry past while pretending not to see.</p><p>She’d like to think that Saren wouldn’t be dragging himself home to an empty apartment to apply medigel to himself, to sew the wound shut with shaky hands and no one to apply anaesthetic. That the council is better, somehow, than the people who run special operations in the Alliance.</p><p>But she can see, in the bloody desperation in Saren’s eyes, in the viciously prideful set of his shoulders, that he doesn’t have anyone to help keep him alive.</p><p>Shepard shuts her eyes, hisses out a sigh through her clenched teeth and steps forward.</p><p>“Come on,” she says, holding out a hand to show him she’s unarmed. “My apartment’s only a ward or two up from here.”</p><p>-</p><p>He doesn’t want to go with her - of course he doesn’t, but he isn’t stupid enough to turn away free help. Perhaps he has some kind of deadman switch, set up so that someone would know where he died and implicate her.</p><p>Perhaps he doesn’t have enough fight in him to resist an offer of help.</p><p>Either way, Shepard half-carries him through two ward elevators and up a flight of stairs to dump him onto her ratty old couch. She makes a cursory extranet search to make sure that human medigel will work on him. As turns out it won’t - but the medical monofilament she had stashed in the bathroom for stitches would do to sew him up.</p><p>And so she found herself walking into the turian grocery down the street, in the wee hours of the artificial morning, to buy dextro medigel and turian painkillers. It was not something she’d ever pictured herself doing, but the bleary-eyed turian cashier didn’t so much as blink when she set them down, and after a moment’s deliberation, added a couple of dextro ration bars to the pile.</p><p>“Those are the worst flavor,” the turian told her, her voice bored. “If you’re buying those for your boyfriend, he’s going to hate you.”</p><p>Shepard can’t help a wry, half-humorous exhale at that.</p><p>“Good,” she says, grabbing another one and adding it to the checkout pile. “He owes me for this.”</p><p>-</p><p>Saren is dozing when Shepard makes her way back into the apartment, his head hanging down, the back of his carapace wedged between two couch cushions. The bandage hooked awkwardly around his hip is beginning to show spots of cobalt blue. Shepard drops her haul on the table to wake him, since she was reasonably sure that shaking him was likely to result in someone getting stabbed. Or bitten, or headbutted - not, of course, that she had <em>ever</em> injured someone trying to wake her up before.</p><p>The way he startled was funny, at least, as was the glare he shot in her direction.</p><p>“Oh, don’t be like that,” Shepard says, with as much obnoxious cheer as she can muster. “I brought gifts.”</p><p>Saren doesn’t deign to respond to that with more than an expressive glance, but he does snatch the medigel out of her hands when she picks it out of the pile. That seems to be mostly an excuse to scrutinize the ingredients, which makes Shepard roll her eyes.</p><p>“Honestly,” she says, letting herself sound as put upon as she feels, “if I wanted to kill you, I would have left you in the street.”</p><p>“I imagine there are other uses for me,” Saren hisses, giving her a narrow eyed look. The medigel, apparently passing muster, comes out of the pack while he divests himself of the bandage with brutal efficiency. Shepard doesn’t bother offering to help, instead taking inventory of the ugly stitches crawling like translucent caterpillars up his side. He’s probably dehydrated.</p><p>“You’d better not need blood,” she warns him. “I’ve got no idea where to get that without sending you to a hospital.”</p><p>Saren gives her another look, diverting his attention from applying the medigel. “What do you want?”</p><p>Shepard sighs. She thought that he’d save this conversation at least until he’d gotten another bandage on.</p><p>“I don’t want anything,” she informs him, leaning on the back of another chair.</p><p>“Do you honestly think I am idiotic enough to believe that?” Saren snaps at her. “What do you <em>want?</em> You cannot imagine that gratitude will be enough to get me to betray the council.”</p><p>“Nothing.” Shepard enunciates every syllable of the word with mechanical precision. “I’m not <em>idiotic</em> enough to expect any favors from you.”</p><p>Saren flares his mandibles, exposing his razor-sharp turian teeth in a gesture of aggression that most would deem uncivilized. Shepard rolls her eyes at him.</p><p>“There’s a human morality tale called the farmer and the viper. It’s about an agriculturalist who saves a snake from a trap and gets bitten when he tries to release it. When he asks the snake why it bit him, it tells him that it is its nature to bite, gratitude or no. It’s not in your nature to help humans, Saren, and I’m not enough of a fool to think gratitude could change it. If I learned nothing else from the refinery...”</p><p>Saren actually contrives to look surprised. Shepard sucks air through her teeth, forcing herself back to calm with an effort of will. She’s put enough effort into keeping him alive that it’d be a waste to kill him now.</p><p>She shouldn’t have reminded herself of all of the reasons that she wants to.</p><p>“Then why am I here?” Saren asks, the words like knives on her abraded patience.</p><p>“I don’t know,” Shepard says, unable to keep the edge of bitterness out of her voice. “Maybe it just makes me feel better about myself.”</p><p>She turns on her heel, and stalks back into the bedroom of her tiny apartment.</p><p>The next time she leaves it, he’s gone. So are the ration bars and the medigel. The painkillers, the bandages, and the monofilament are tucked neatly back into the medical kit.</p><p>The parody of courtesy makes it worse, somehow.</p><p>———</p><p>Anderson’s first few weeks aboard the SSV Tokyo are, in a word, boring. They are mostly filled with paperwork, introductions, and dry runs of all the duties he’s going to be responsible for going forward. And once that’s done, there’s not much to do aside from watch the stars pass as they hop from system to system on their patrol route.</p><p>He spends most of that time wishing that the action would start already. This, inactivity, wasn’t what the Alliance went to the trouble of training him for. He doesn’t say that out loud, but he guesses that Shepard reads it on him anyways, judging by the paper-thin sympathy and the transparently hidden amusement.</p><p>Of course, when the action finally does start, he immediately wishes that everything was still boring. It’s batarian pirates, because it’s almost always batarian pirates. The Alliance doesn’t maintain a heavy presence in the Terminus Systems for nothing.</p><p>He gets the feeling that this wouldn’t be a problem normally. The Tokyo has enough firepower to outgun the batarian ships twice over, and they would be able to tear through them in a few volleys if they needed to. But the batarians have human prisoners (because they always have human prisoners) so Shepard wants to do a strike mission on the holding facility to liberate them before the shooting starts, in case they try to use them as hostages.</p><p>A small team, a vital mission - it’s an ideal opportunity for Shepard and Anderson to put their N7 training to good use. Anderson can’t say he wasn’t excited.</p><p>Then (because, he learns later, apparently Shepard’s luck is just <em>like that</em>) it turns out that the holding facility was actually a super-secret <em>testing</em> facility for the kind of batarian science that Anderson dearly hopes is against council regulations, and the whole thing is guarded by a literal army of the best commandos the batarian military has to offer and-</p><p>Well, long story short, six hours after they break atmosphere Jenkins is dead and Anderson is in a dirty cell with both hands applying pressure to Shepard’s stomach, hoping that he remembered the medi-gel triage procedures correctly. And that he had enough to actually staunch the blood. And that there was actually enough to do that. And that he didn’t just apply it to someplace that wasn’t actually bleeding, because it had been along time since the first aid classes.</p><p>He would have asked Shepard, he would have loved to be able to ask Shepard, but she passed out shortly after taking a bladed punch to the gut and has shown no sign of waking up since. The other prisoners (the ones that are alive, anyways) are huddled at the opposite corner of the cell, looking at them with wide-eyed despair.</p><p>The Tokyo has probably noticed that they’re overdue by now. Probably they’ve scanned the facility in more depth and called for backup, and probably in a day or so the Alliance will mount a rescue mission.</p><p>All they have to do, Anderson tells himself, is stay alive that long. Even that much isn’t looking like a sure bet.</p><p>Some time after that - it feels like hours - the shooting starts.</p><p>For the first second or so, Anderson assumes that it’s the Alliance rescue mission. But then he remembers that they are a day, at the least, from any kind of Alliance backup and no matter how long it feels like they’ve been in that cell there’s no way it’s been <em>that</em> long. And there’s no one left on the Tokyo who could mount this kind of rescue.</p><p>So, if it’s not the Alliance, what is it? Batarian infighting? Pirates turning on their government or the government turning on an experiment gone politically inconvenient?</p><p>Either way, it probably won’t end well for them. Anderson counts the seconds and thinks back to hand to hand combat training. It’s going to be one against many - how can he even the odds? Can he get someone else to keep Shepard from bleeding out while he does?</p><p>Anderson eyes the other prisoners, gone wide-eyed and confused at the conflict, and privately doesn’t rate his chances.</p><p>When, finally, someone comes through the door, it’s not what he’s expecting. Towering over them, especially with Anderson kneeling by Shepard’s side, is the meanest looking turian he’s ever seen in his life. His pale, scarred carapace is splashed with blood - batarian or human, Anderson can’t tell. His mandibles are long, narrowing to razor points well behind his head. His eyes are a watery, pale blue, and he’s looking at the assorted humans in the cell with the worst sort of derision, like he’s looking at something nasty stuck to the bottom of his shoe.</p><p>His eyes linger on Shepard for a moment longer than they should. Anderson hunches a little further over her, and shoots the turian a glare of his own.</p><p>“The council was not informed of Alliance operations in this sector,” the turian intones, “Your shortsighted raid on this base has disrupted my intelligence gathering mission in this sector. The council <em>will</em> hear about this.”</p><p>As though it’s an afterthought, he shoots a look over his shoulder at one of the human prisoners anxiously trailing after him. “Get a stretcher for the woman.”</p><p>-</p><p>Saren (someone eventually tells Anderson his name) acts as though he wants to storm out as dramatically as he walked in. But he stays to organize the evacuation of the prisoners. Anderson has to yell at him to get him to release them to Alliance custody, and he has a headache by the end of it.</p><p>But the shuttles get loaded, Anderson gets whatever evidence he can drag out of Saren’s clawed fingers, and they get ready to return to the Tokyo. Saren is heading out on the shuttle he flew in on, off to report to the council or go and storm some other base of operations, Anderson doesn’t really care which.</p><p>And that would be that, but for one last piece of weirdness on the way out. Anderson organizes the former prisoners - he has to, Saren refused to even try - which means he has to leave Shepard alone on the ship. There was enough medi-gel to stop her bleeding, so he can’t really justify sitting at her bedside when there are other people who need his attention more.</p><p>But they’re on the first shuttle to the Tokyo together - they have to be, Anderson is the XO and he needs to be overseeing things from the bridge - so he heads back to the shuttle as soon as he can. Might as well keep an eye on Shepard if he can.</p><p>Standing over her sleeping form like some kind of ominous statue, is Saren. The turian’s head is bent, just slightly, so that he can see her face. As Anderson watches, too surprised to move, the turian lifts a clawed hand and sets his fingers, very gently, on her cheek.</p><p><em>That</em><em>’s</em> enough to get Anderson to start moving, but Saren moves before Anderson can chase him off, before he can really see him, turning on his black-cloaked heel and disappearing into the lengthening twilight shadows.</p><p>-</p><p>Anderson resolves to tell her about it once she wakes up. He has no idea what that was about, but he’s absolutely not going to keep quiet about it.</p><p>But first, he needs to deliver his report. When he gets to the turian, Shepard, dressed in a hospital gown and only upright because she’s propped up by stiff medbay pillows, sighs.</p><p>“Saren,” she says, ruefully. “I should have guessed. We’ll probably need to visit the Citadel to make sure the right story gets told.”</p><p>“Wait,” Anderson says, “you <em>know</em> him?”</p><p>“Yes?” Shepard asks, tilting her head a fraction of an inch. “Why is that- he didn’t mention he knew me.”</p><p>She looks a little bit put out, but not particularly surprised.</p><p>“He did not,” Anderson confirms. Shepard rolls her eyes. “He also, uh, touched you?”</p><p>“He <em>what.</em>”</p><p>“Um, on the face,” Anderson gestures. Shepard’s expression changes from tempered rage to an expression which - well, Anderson isn’t really sure what it means, but he’s very sure that it isn’t disgust. Or confusion. Which is <em>extraordinarily </em>weird.</p><p>“Uh,” Anderson says, not sure how to phrase any of the many, many questions he wants to ask.</p><p>“You want to know how we know each other.” Shepard shuts her eyes as she says it, in a long exhausted blink.</p><p>“Yes,” Anderson confirms. “And why you two are...”</p><p>He’s not sure there’s a tactful way to finish that sentence. ‘What’s going on between the two of you’ makes it sound like there’s some sort of drawn out emotional affair. Anderson really hopes that’s not it.</p><p>Shepard tilts her head back, obviously thinking. After a long, long moment, she speaks. “You know how sometimes,” she says, meditatively, “you meet someone who is so similar to you that you just kind of want to...”</p><p>She trails off and waves the hand that doesn’t have an iv in it around vaguely.</p><p>“You know, rip their eyes out of their skull so that they’ll stop <em>fucking looking at you</em>.” She glances at Anderson’s expression and sighs. “No? Just me then?”</p><p>Anderson doesn’t trust himself not to say what he’s thinking in response to that, so he just nods.</p><p>Shepard sighs again, sounding put upon. “I was in the running to become humanity’s first spectre,” she says, abruptly. “He knocked me out of it. I had an- oh, what do they call it? An evaluation mission. With him. It went badly, there was a scandal, we would have cheerfully hated each other for the rest of forever, except-”</p><p>Shepard shakes her head. “Well, it’s a bit more complicated than that nowadays.”</p><p>Anderson waits for her to go on, but she doesn’t. Her expression is set in the stubborn way it sometimes gets. He guesses that’s all the information he’s getting out of her today.</p><p>Shepard gestures for him to go on with his report, and he does, but he makes a mental note to look up the human spectre thing later. He’s sure that’s not all there is to the story.</p><p>———</p><p>Well, Shepard supposes she can’t blame Anderson for being curious about her “relationship” with Saren. She would have zeroed in on it too, as an advantage or something likely to cause mission complications. She is, unfortunately, not quite sure whether it will be an asset or a liability in the long run.</p><p>She’d figured after the first two times she’d helped him that they would settle into a pattern where she would help him if he needed it and the two of them would politely pretend they’d never met whenever he didn’t.</p><p>Saren, unfortunately, had not complied with her plans.</p><p>The first time he’d demonstrated that was on the Citadel, in nearly the same place he’d almost bled out in. The human grocery by her apartment went out, so she’s been forced to carry her plastic bags of cold noodles and kai lan up three wards and across half the neighborhood, what feels like ten times the normal amount of walking it takes to get groceries.</p><p>Which means, of course, that she’s about ten times more likely to get ambushed by some street thugs that think they’re tough.</p><p>Shepard had known it was a risk, choosing to live in the lower wards. She could probably afford a place higher up, but all the rich people on the Presidium give her hives and it’s not as though she can’t deal with street thugs. She could beat them up with one hand tied behind her back. Unfortunately, her groceries won’t fare nearly so well and her employment at the embassy certainly won’t survive an assault charge. Especially not one against turians, which seem to comprise the better part of this group.</p><p>Shepard ignores the leader of the thugs, demanding her attention, her fear, and her wallet in no particular order, and contemplates what to do. She’s tempted to just kill them - but then, murder is worse than assault and she can’t really claim it was self-defense.</p><p>The wisest thing to do, most likely, is just to run. She can probably make it up onto the rooftops if she drops her grocery bags, none of them look fit enough to follow her.</p><p>But then she loses her dinner and also her pride. Shepard, fundamentally, doesn’t want to give anything to this class of thug, and she is very bad at controlling her impulses.</p><p>The lead thug, noticing that she’s not paying any particular attention to him, gets into her personal space in an unprofessional effort to intimidate her.</p><p>Shepard lets the arm holding her grocery bags drop lower, so the bags trail on the street. She’s going to grab him first, dislocate the shoulder probably, and then move for the others. She waits for him to take a step closer, but he doesn’t.</p><p>He stops, cold, his jaw hanging open, looking at something behind her.</p><p>Or rather, she guesses, someone.</p><p>“Leave,” Saren’s voice comes, from above her right shoulder. His tone is frigid, violence practically condensing off the words and dripping into the air. The thugs scatter, dashing off into the shadows like frightened pyjacks.</p><p>Shepard takes a step forward, getting herself some distance from him, and then turns on her heel to give him a look.</p><p>“What was that for?” she asks.</p><p>Saren eyes her, coldly. “I saved you,” he noted. “You might say thank you.”</p><p>Shepard rolls her eyes. “You saved my groceries. Thank you, for keeping my broccoli from getting smushed. Why did you <em>bother</em>?”</p><p>Saren looks at her. Disdain drips from his expression.</p><p>“We’re not friends,” she warns him, “and I didn’t need your help.”</p><p>Saren scoffs. “You weren’t stopping them.”</p><p>“It would have been inconvenient,” Shepard says, folding her arms over her chest, the plastic of the grocery bag crinkling against her hip.</p><p>“There you go then,” Saren gestures at her. “I saved you the inconvenience.”</p><p>“<em>Why?</em>” Shepard demands.</p><p>Saren, who was already in the process of sweeping off to whatever ominous things he usually does with his day, shoots her a look over his shoulder.</p><p>“I’m not a viper,” he says, cryptically, and then vanishes into the shadows of the wards, his steps clicking against the metal flooring.</p><p>Shepard stares after him, her brow crinkling in confusion.</p><p>“What the fuck,” she manages, after a minute or so.</p><p>———</p><p>The next time Anderson sees Saren, nobody’s bleeding out.</p><p>Shepard warned him that there are no guarantees on that front, but given that they are on the fanciest cruise ship Anderson has ever seen (and that’s saying something, his mom loved space cruises when he was younger) with the promise of good food and soft beds for a full week at the least, he’s feeling optimistic.</p><p>This is an infiltration mission, apparently Shepard’s specialty when she was back in N-school, and she’s practically giddy about getting to put on one of her many, many false identities. They’re trying to get close to a turian merc leader notorious for taking hit missions on human colonies. Hopefully close enough to get some data on who’s hiring her and why. Anderson isn’t sure that she’ll even be willing to talk to them, given her probable xenophobia, but apparently Hackett thought that their “combined charm” would be enough to complete the mission.</p><p>Anderson is mostly sure Hackett isn’t expecting one of them to seduce her.</p><p>Mostly.</p><p>Shepard doesn’t seem worried about it, at least.</p><p>The first curveball comes early. They’re barely through the door when Anderson hears a vaguely familiar turian voice, talking in strident tones. He looks toward it, and does a double-take. That is Saren Arterius, extremely famous turian spectre, arguing with the concierge. It doesn’t look like anyone’s recognized him - but this is a cruise in the Terminus Systems, intended for incredibly rich pirates. A spectre is not going to be welcome, and even if they let him in, his presence is going to put everyone on high alert.</p><p>Apparently, Shepard’s thinking that too. One second Anderson is gaping at the turian, trying to figure out how they’re going to salvage this, the next she’s dragging him through the crowd, her heels clicking menacingly against the expensive tile.</p><p>“Mendax!” she chirps, waving at Arterius. “Is that you, honey? Did you forget I was carrying the tickets?”</p><p>She releases Anderson and steps closer to Saren, hooking her hand through his elbow like she’s done it a million times before and shooting a high-wattage grin at the concierge.</p><p>Saren stands stock-still, stiff and unresponsive in her grip. Anderson hopes that he’ll develop enough sense to play along in the next ten seconds or so, but it’s not looking likely.</p><p>Help comes from an unexpected corner. Just past Saren’s other shoulder, another turian, with a brown carapace and white markings and startling green eyes speaks up.</p><p>“Hi mom.” He says, sheepishly, looking directly at Shepard. “I told dad that he should wait on you, but you know how he gets. I think he was trying to surprise you.”</p><p>“Aww, honey,” Shepard coos. With the hand that’s not glomming onto Saren, she reaches into her purse and grabs her datapad - complete with virtual tickets - and hands it to Anderson. The message is clear - add the turians and make sure the names match. “That’s sweet of you, but you know you can just leave these things to me. And how are you, Nihlus? I know you and David haven’t seen each other since you went off to do your mandatory service.”</p><p>That’s Anderson’s cue. He steps forward, sliding Shepard’s datapad back into her purse, and offers a hand to Nihlus. When the turian takes it, he pulls him in close for a friendly slap on the back.</p><p>“It’s good to see you, man,” he says, pitching his voice a little bit lower than normal, “how’s the military treating you? Got a hot turian babe to kick your ass yet?”</p><p>Nihlus rolls his eyes. “I’ve told you a billion times, David, turian military service doesn’t work like it does in the vids.”</p><p>“I live in hope,” Anderson says, grinning at him.</p><p>Shepard looks away from them and back to the concierge. “I’m Valentina Arterius,” she says, offering a hand to shake. “Let’s get this sorted out, I’m sure you’re having a busy day.</p><p>-</p><p>Five minutes later, when they’re out of the crowded lobby and the bug-sweeper program on Shepard’s datapad has reported them clear of surveillance, at least for the moment, Nihlus turns towards Saren.</p><p>“Arterius,” he says, gently chiding, “you should have told me you were expecting back-up.”</p><p>Saren doesn’t say anything.</p><p>“Oh, he wasn’t,” Shepard says, with wicked cheer. “But if they’d kicked you guys off the ship, everyone would have been on high alert. Terrible for infiltration.”</p><p>Nihlus turns to look at her, his mandibles slack with surprise.</p><p>“So you two - know each other?”</p><p>“Of course,” Shepard says, beatifically. “I’m his best friend.”</p><p>“Shepard,” Saren grinds out, “stop lying to my trainee.”</p><p>Shepard cackles. Nihlus, apparently giving up on getting a straight answer out of either of them, turns to look at Anderson. Anderson gives him an expressive shrug and mouths ‘I’ve got no idea’.</p><p>Since Shepard is too busy laughing, even now, her arm still hooked through Saren’s for some reason, Anderson decides that it’s up to him to make introductions.</p><p>“I’m David Anderson,” he says to Nihlus. “Alliance Navy. She’s Captain Shepard of the SSV Tokyo. I know who Arterius is, but-?”</p><p>“Nihlus Kryik,” the turian says, with a grave nod. “Spectre in training.”</p><p>“Nice to meet you,” Anderson says.</p><p>“Likewise.” Nihlus politely inclines his head. “Shepard, may I ask how you know me? I don’t recall us meeting.”</p><p>“You’re Saren’s favorite trainee,” Shepard says, in the pitch of cheerful that means she’s lying. “He talks about you all the time.”</p><p>Nihlus perks up. “Really?”</p><p>“No,” Shepard says, “I hacked his datapad.”</p><p>Seeing the way Nihlus droops, she adds: “Oh, don’t make that face. He really does like you, if the glowing reports he’s given to the Council are any indication.”</p><p>Nihlus gives her a suspicious look, but Saren takes that moment to speak up.</p><p>“I am standing right here, Shepard,” he says.</p><p>“And not denying it!” Shepard points out.</p><p>Saren makes a haughty noise. Nihlus, perhaps noticing that he’s still not contradicting her, perks up again.</p><p>Shepard pulls them to a halt outside room 1126. “Alright kids,” she says, with a sickly-sweet edge of Valentina Arterius to her voice, “here’s where we’re staying.”</p><p>“Nihlus,” Saren says, “I will ask you to gather intelligence on our situation. Return here by eight, there is a <em>ball,</em>” his voice is thick with distaste, “at nine.”</p><p>“Anderson,” Shepard says, cheerfully, “same deal. There’s a pool party on deck three you might want to check out.” She throws him a key to the room.</p><p>Within the next ten seconds, the two of them have disappeared inside the room, leaving Anderson and Nihlus standing together in the hallway.</p><p>“So,” Nihlus says, “do you think they’re actually, you know, involved?”</p><p>-</p><p>“I’m telling you,” Anderson says, “she wants to like, <em>maim</em> him.”</p><p>“And I’m just saying,” Nihlus counters, like he has done every time Anderson made a reasonable argument, “that’s the longest I’ve ever seen him touch any living thing that he wasn’t trying to kill.”</p><p>“Maybe it’s just that he thinks she’s attractive or something,” Anderson tries. The mental images make him wince.</p><p>“Dude,” Nihlus says, “last mission, there was this asari pirate. Hottest person you’ve ever seen. She was trying to put the moves on Saren, get him to not arrest her or something. She tried to stroke his arm and the literal microsecond she put her hand on him he punched her in the face. Broke her nose, right there in front of her whole crew. We had to fight our way out.”</p><p>Anderson groaned. “Yours too? There was this Alliance bigwig that like, put his hand on Shepard’s back, and she just grabbed him and literally threw him six feet over the conference table. The only reason he didn’t press charges was she could have made a case for sexual harassment if he did.”</p><p>“Spirits,” Nihlus shook his head. “She was touching Saren, you know.”</p><p>Anderson shook his head. “She doesn’t mind touching people. Just hates being touched. I wonder if there’s like, some kind of psychological condition that goes with being that good at hand to hand combat. Once you reach a certain level you just,” he gestures, “punch anyone that puts their hands on you.”</p><p>“I hope not,” Nihlus sniffs.</p><p>Anderson shoots him a look, and he elaborates.</p><p>“I’m going to be able to beat Saren someday,” he informs Anderson. “And I swear on the spirits of my ancestors I’m still going to be able to get laid when I do.”</p><p>Anderson snorts a laugh at the unexpected vulgarity. “I’ll drink to that,” he says.</p><p>-</p><p>And drink to it they do. The pool on deck three is enormous and crowded with attractive, scantily clad people of every possible combination of species and gender.</p><p>Neither of them have a swimsuit, so they sit at the open bar and sip the stupid, expensive beer. There’s no way to get to know each other, not without blowing their cover in front of the bartender, so instead they make meaningless small talk about the latest big asari action film. Anderson watches the crowd for his target as they do, trying to pick a single turian face out of the crowd of dozens of them.</p><p>At least, until someone steps in front of his face.</p><p>She’s asari, standing with another asari that looks so similar to her that they might as well be twins. She’s wearing the skintight black suit that an untrained human might mistake for something other than armor.</p><p>“Hi,” she says, smiling a bright, seductive smile. “You boys looking for some fun?”</p><p>Anderson flicks a glance towards Nihlus. The turian is looking dead ahead, but there’s a tension to his shoulders. He’s probably getting the same feeling, that this is going to turn out to be an ambush. But there’s no way to refuse them without looking even more suspicious, so Anderson finishes his beer and gives them a smile he hopes doesn’t come off as insincere.</p><p>“Sure,” he says. “Coming, Nihlus?”</p><p>-</p><p>There are times when Anderson wonders if Shepard is ever smug about her ability to know, somehow, every time they’re about to get ambushed by pirates. Surely there must be a warm, fuzzy feeling every time she tells them to look sharp about fifteen seconds before an entire squad of salarian pirates drops from the ceiling like a pack of heavily armed tarantulas.</p><p>But every time <em>he </em>does it, he’s usually too busy trying not to die to celebrate. Like now.</p><p>Anderson ducks under a biotic projectile, and wishes, bitterly, that his clothes had been bulky enough to hide an assault rifle. As it is, he can only snap off a couple of shots from his light pistol in between ducking around a table. The asari assasins don’t seem to be armed, so cover’s going to be useless.</p><p>He caught one of them in the shoulder, and she’s ducking backwards as Nihlus presses her, throwing a punch that she dodges easily. Anderson takes her moment of distraction to line up a shot, and it goes off, blowing the asari’s skull to pieces right between two of her crests. He pays for the second’s pause, as the other asari flips him into the air with a biotic projectile.</p><p>It’s Nihlus’ turn to take advantage of the distraction. As Anderson spins ineffectually, he pulls a wicked looking turian knife out of a holster on the inside of his jacket and chucks it at the asari. It embeds itself in her shoulder, and he ducks forward to throw a punch, driving it deeper.</p><p>He dodges a biotically enhanced punch, and then pulls out another knife, which he jams straight through her windpipe.</p><p>Anderson drops from midair, landing hard on his back with an ‘oof’. He’s going to feel that in the morning.</p><p>“You’re a good shot,” Nihlus says, stepping over to offer him a hand.</p><p>“Thanks,” Anderson says, getting to his feet with a wince. He’s definitely got bruises all up his back. “You throw a good punch.”</p><p>“I’m a spectre candidate,” Nihlus dismisses him, letting Anderson gather his feet. “It’s expected of <em>me.</em>”</p><p>Anderson snorts at him. “I made N7 - if I couldn’t hit a shot, Shepard would have never taken me on.”</p><p>“I didn’t expect you to be able to keep up,” Nihlus says, with the blunt turian honesty that Anderson usually respects. At the moment, though, he’s not so fond of it. “Saren said-”</p><p>“Saren’s wrong,” Anderson says, flatly. He’s pried enough information out of Shepard to guess what Saren would say about the human military.</p><p>Nihlus frowns at him. Anderson doesn’t give him a chance to respond.</p><p>“Come on,” he says, “we’ve got to report back. Shepard will want to know that someone’s gunning for us.”</p><p>Anderson glances around the room and sighs.</p><p>“Though she’ll probably want us to clean up first.”</p><p>“Hide the bodies?” Nihlus glances around the room dubiously.</p><p>“There’ll be an incinerator,” Anderson says, grimly. There’s always an incinerator on these kinds of ships. Actually, he’s pretty sure that Shepard has started marking them on the map for him.</p><p>-</p><p>After a truly hellish amount of playing lookout, they wind up having to cross half the ship to get back to their room. The staff’s deliberate lack of curiosity about the purple bloodstains on their clothes is - well, Anderson can’t approve of it, but he supposes it makes their job easier. Thinking about the kind of indifference it would take to clean this kind of ship depresses him.</p><p>Nihlus has been pretty quiet, shooting Anderson looks like he’s worried he’s offended him. Anderson isn’t interested in explaining that he hasn’t, not just yet. If Nihlus hasn’t noticed the wonderful world of alien power dynamics yet, Anderson’s going to need more than one beer to enlighten him. He’s perfectly set to just barge into their room and start his report, but Nihlus catches him on the shoulder before he can make it to the door.</p><p>Anderson shoots him a look, but Nihlus holds a hand up for him to wait.</p><p>Now that he’s paying attention, he can hear it too, raised voices inside the door.</p><p>“-’s an auditory hallucination, Arterius.” Shepard is saying. “How long have-?”</p><p>“That’s none of your concern,” Saren hisses, his voice sharp and defensive. “It won’t affect the mission.”</p><p>Shepard’s voice drops, too low for Anderson to make out her next words.</p><p>Saren’s response, by contrast, is strident. “No,” he snaps. “You cannot possibly expect me to take you up on that. I am not weak enough to need-”</p><p>“It’s not about-” Shepard starts, and then cuts herself off with obvious frustration. “Fine, whatever. Have you been sleeping?”</p><p>“That is not relevant to this conversation,” Saren says, haughtily. “Why you would think-”</p><p>“It might help, Arterius,” Shepard says, her tone the coaxing one she likes to use on civilians when they’re about to get hysterical. “And you can’t tell me that’s not going to affect the mission.”</p><p>Saren snarls at her, but even Anderson can tell his heart’s not in it.</p><p>“It won’t help,” he says, after a moment. “You don’t need to condescend to me, Shepard.”</p><p>“I don’t think you’re weak, Saren,” she sighs. “If you want a nap- I’ll keep watch.”</p><p>There’s silence on the other side of the door.</p><p>“It won’t help,” Saren repeats. He sounds exhausted. “But I will try.”</p><p>There’s a shuffling noise on the other side of the door.</p><p>Anderson and Nihlus trade wide-eyed glances. Before they can figure out whether or not to go in, the door opens, and Shepard steps out.</p><p>She’s pinching the bridge of her nose, her shoulders slumped slightly. At least, until she catches sight of them and straightens, holding a finger up and taking a deep breath. Her omni-tool flares to life around her wrist and she gestures with it. Anderson guesses she’s activating her noise-cancellation program.</p><p>“How much of that did you hear?” she asks, crisply.</p><p>“Auditory hallucinations?” Nihlus says, incredulously. “But he seems-”</p><p>“Saren is good enough that they don’t interfere,” Shepard says, firmly. “Not much, anyways. As far as I can tell, they’ve been happening for months now. Why are you two back?”</p><p>“Assassins,” Anderson says, succinctly.</p><p>Shepard sighs. “There for us or the turians, you think?”</p><p>“No idea,” Anderson says, honestly.</p><p>“Shouldn’t we do something about him?” Nihlus says, sounding concerned. “Surely there’s someone we can report this to.”</p><p>Shepard shakes her head. “I’m not convinced there is. Even if there were, he wouldn’t thank you for it.”</p><p>“The Council-” Nihlus begins.</p><p>“Won’t want to know,” Shepard says, firmly. “More importantly, they won’t help him. There’s no health services for Spectres that I can tell. Once you join them, your health is your own responsibility.”</p><p>She sounds grim. Nihlus seems to interpret her tone as a criticism.</p><p>“You say that as though the Alliance is better,” he says, stiffly.</p><p>“The Alliance black ops division has health services,” Shepard says, flatly. “But- it doesn’t mean humanity is better. For the most part, that makes us worse.”</p><p>Anderson shoots her a skeptical look. Nihlus seems to agree.</p><p>“That doesn’t make sense,” the turian argues.</p><p>“They’re more in the habit of causing problems than curing them.” She shoots Anderson a look. “Remind me to warn you about Cerberus sometime.”</p><p>Anderson salutes her. She’s made it very clear that the only way he’s joining black ops is over her dead, rotting corpse. He’s not really looking forward to another horrible war story.</p><p>“I had hoped that the Council would be better,” Shepard says, and she sounds tired. “They’ve had centuries to- well, it doesn’t really matter. Nihlus - the best thing you can do is trust him. Get him to trust you, too. Enough that you can confirm if something is real or not.”</p><p>“But-” Nihlus glances at her. “Shouldn’t he at least take a break? It doesn’t seem wise for him to just- keep going.”</p><p>“It’s not. But he’s not willing to stop,” she says. “Even if he were- vacation time only seems to make it worse.”</p><p>Shepard shakes her head. “He won’t thank me for saying that much. We’ll need to get back to the mission soon. You’ve taken care of the bodies?”</p><p>She directs that to Anderson.</p><p>“Yes, ma’am,” he tells her.</p><p>“Good,” she says. “Much as I hate to do it, we’ll need to wake Saren up. We need to work together for this.”</p><p>She turns on her heel and starts back into the room. Nihlus looks after her. There’s something a little bit lost in his expression, as though he’s not sure what to do.</p><p>Anderson can’t blame him. Shepard has always seemed untouchable, invincible. If he’d heard this about her-</p><p>“Come on,” he says, bumping Nihlus’ shoulder with his own. “It’ll be alright.”</p><p>And together, they get moving.</p><p>———</p><p>A memory:</p><p>It’s artificial night on Shepard’s corner of the Citadel. She’s sitting on the roof of her apartment building, having picked her way past the maintenance locks. She’s got a bottle of cheap booze in one hand, and she’s stretching the other out in front of her. Her feet are dangling over the edge. She’s fifty stories up and one bottle in, she can’t look down or the alcohol and the vertigo will combine to make her throw up.</p><p>That’s fine, there’s enough to look at in the skycars and the skylines of other, more distant wards. She can’t see the Citadel tower from here, but she can pretend. She’s drunk enough that she’s not above aimlessly flipping off the skyline.</p><p>Behind her, the door clicks open.</p><p>Shepard rolls her eyes.</p><p>“Go away, Arterius,” she says. “I’m not in the mood to deal with you today. Bleed out somewhere else.”</p><p>“I’m not bleeding out,” says Saren, sounding vaguely affronted.</p><p><em>That</em> is worrying information. Saren, generally speaking, cannot be trusted to know how much blood qualifies as ‘bleeding out’. Shepard shoots him a glance over her shoulder.</p><p>He is not, in fact, bleeding out. All four of his limbs are attached. He’s dressed in casual clothing - or what passes for casual in Saren’s wardrobe. She suspects that the sleek black ensemble that he’s wearing costs more than an ordinary Alliance grunt would make in a year.</p><p>He’s ridiculously overdressed for her concrete and rust rooftop, and even more when compared to her. She is sensibly dressed for midnight drinking in an oversized t-shirt, a pair of short shorts, and a single flip-flop. She’s pretty sure that she kicked the other one off at some point, losing it to the crowded skyway below her.</p><p>“Well, if you’re not bleeding out, what are you here for?”</p><p>“The woman at the convenience store,” Saren says, “was rather convinced that you were going to try and drink yourself to death.”</p><p>And she had told Saren, because Shepard had convinced her that they were dating, because the sour face he had made at it was funny. She should have known it would come back to bite her. Oh well, the thought of how he must have reacted to the assumption that he’d care about her death is amusing enough to make up for the regrets.</p><p>“I’m not,” Shepard says, turning her attention back to the skyline and taking another sip out of her bottle. “Go away, Arterius.”</p><p>“I’m reasonably certain that drinking near twenty-meter drops counts as suicidal behavior.”</p><p>Shepard rolls her eyes, though he’s got no way of seeing it.</p><p>“I’m not going to fall,” she says, and to prove it she gets up, bracing herself on the ledge as she puts her feet underneath her and stands, balancing perfectly on the narrow lip of the building’s edge.</p><p>She turns to face Saren, wobbling a little with the motion, and blinks, confused, as he twitches forward. Like he actually thinks she’s going to fall. Like he wants to catch her if she does.</p><p>“Oh shit,” she says, “you’re actually concerned.”</p><p>Shepard hops off the ledge and takes an unsteady step towards him, taking another swig of alcohol to try and make all her confusing emotions about that go away.</p><p>“Is this some kind of guilt thing?” she wonders aloud, reaching out to try and grab Saren’s chin so she can get a better look at his expression.</p><p>He bats her hand away. “Hardly,” he says, and when she pouts at him, he makes a frustrated noise. “You have dodged every question I have ever asked you about why you care whether I live or die. Why would you expect me not to do the same?”</p><p>“It IS a guilt thing,” Shepard crows, her voice bright with malice.</p><p>“It very much is not,” Saren says, glaring at her.</p><p>“It’s a thing where you think you owe me, right?” Shepard grins at him. “Same difference. Well, a word of advice, Arterius: you’re not going to be able to pay me back like this.”</p><p>“No?” Saren is watching her with an inscrutable expression, but there’s something faintly defensive about him.</p><p>“Nope,” Shepard says, popping the p. “I’m out of that line of work. You know. The one where you nearly die every mission. Nowadays if I get hurt, I can just go to the hospital. Medical assistance is just much more valuable to you than it is to me.”</p><p>“Then I take it you have come up with some way for me to ‘pay you back’?” Saren’s voice goes tense and derisive on the last words.</p><p>Shepard cackles at him. “No need to sound so constipated! You’ll like this one, I promise.”</p><p>She leans forward and hooks her fingers in his collar. “I want you to kill me.”</p><p>Saren’s hand, which had come up to try and pry her off him, freezes around her wrist.</p><p>“Not, like, right now,” Shepard assures him. “In like, four years or so, or whenever I start to think that my bank account is more important than the lives of the people under my command. I would rather you did it before I get anyone killed, but it’s hard to tell when someone starts slipping. But after the first time I send someone to die and it’s not worth it, I want you to snap my neck.”</p><p>Saren stares at her. His hand doesn’t relax, his cold fingers digging into the bones beneath her hand.</p><p>“Shepard,” he says, his voice almost hesitant. “Why are you drinking?”</p><p>“Why does anyone drink?” Shepard raises the bottle in her other hand. “Weddings, funerals, anniversaries, promotions - they’re trying to make me a captain. On the track to a position in the admiralty, I’m told.”</p><p>“You- don’t want the position.” Saren is looking at her like she’s nuts.</p><p>“I don’t <em>trust myself</em> with the position,” Shepard corrects him.</p><p>Saren is still looking at her like he doesn’t get it.</p><p>“‘But why?’” Shepard says, pitching her voice lower in an awful imitation of Saren. “‘Why wouldn’t you trust yourself with the lives of thousands of thousands of people? Who doesn’t have enough of a god complex to do that?’ - it takes a special sort of person to make choices on that scale, and I am not it.”</p><p>“If you know the decision is bad, you can avoid it,” Saren says, with exaggerated patience. “And with that sort of power you can shape the destiny of humanity on the galactic level. You could-”</p><p>Shepard’s revolted expression must be obvious, enough so that it stops Saren mid-rant.</p><p>“That’s the other reason I’m drinking, you know,” she says. She’s not sure why it’s so important that he understands, but in the moment the need to make him <em>see</em> is all-consuming. “It’s an anniversary. Eight years ago, my husband died. He died because the best man he ever knew, his favorite uncle, decided that his life was less important than some data on some ancient asteroid that might have given humanity an advantage in galactic politics.”</p><p>“Then take the power,” Saren says, “and use it to make the galaxy better. Make it so that no one dies like he did.”</p><p>Shepard shakes her head. “If someone who is fundamentally <em>good</em> can’t handle that kind of power, how could I?”</p><p>She yanks on Saren’s collar. He resists it, standing stable and still. So she closes the distance on her own, standing on her toes to get close to his face.</p><p>“Promise me, Arterius, that you’ll kill me when I go too far. Promise me that, and I’ll forgive every debt between us.”</p><p>Saren, like the dick that he is, tries to pull her hand off his collar. When she doesn’t budge, he shoots her a condescending look.</p><p>“You’ve never claimed that there were debts between us,” he says, coldly. “You’ve proclaimed, time and again, that there was nothing you wanted from me. Why should I do this, when there’s nothing I get in return?”</p><p>He’s making the face that means he’s picking a fight. He expects her to get defensive, angry, try to argue this.</p><p>It means he’s off balance when she laughs at him.</p><p>“Here’s what I’ll give you,” she says. “An offer you can’t refuse. I’ve been where you are, Saren. Just too old for the higher ups to know what to do with you, young things circling you like sharks. Your position isn’t safe, and you’ve got too many enemies to expect the Council to save you when things inevitably go wrong.”</p><p>Shepard drops the bottle in her other hand, letting it shatter on the unforgiving concrete and metal of the roof. She hooks her now-free limb around one of the taller pipes. A brace, for what she’s about to do.</p><p>“Sooner or later, Arterius, you’re going to fall from grace,” she punctuates the words with a smile, and a vicious kick to the back of his legs, knocking his feet out from under him. Saren lets out a turian curse as he falls. Shepard doesn’t let go of his collar.</p><p>He doesn’t hit the ground. She’s holding him up, the disgustingly expensive fabric of his shirt strong enough to support his weight, her body braced between the solid metal of the pipe and the heaviness of Saren in her hand. Shepard isn’t above feeling a little mean satisfaction at being able to look down on him for once.</p><p>“And when you do,” she says, almost softly, “I’ll catch you.”</p><p>She lets her face break into a shit-eating grin, smug as she can make it.</p><p>“Do we have a deal?”</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>Warnings for: mild self-harm, mild suicidal ideation, sliiightly unbetaed.</p><p>This thing got long! Let me know if dating the sections would make them easier to understand, I have a timeline worked out somewhere.</p><p>After this, we start ME1 and the nonsense really gets going.</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. Chapter 2</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Early in 2183, Shepard gets an offer. A prototype stealth vessel, built from human-turian collaboration. She taps Anderson to be her XO, something Anderson is proud to be able to take for granted.</p><p>Her maiden voyage is a routine trip to Eden Prime. They’re overstaffed for a dry run, but Anderson doesn’t think too much of it, at least until Pressley grabs his arm to hiss a question in his ear.</p><p>“You know they’ve got a turian on board, right?”</p><p>Anderson blinks at him. He hadn’t known that, actually. Though Shepard had wanted to see him...</p><p>“Well, the Hierarchy did help build the ship,” Anderson says, reassuringly. “They probably just want to keep an eye on their investment.”</p><p>“They’re saying he’s a spectre,” Joker says, when he visits the bridge. “Spectres are trouble, Anderson.”</p><p>So, Anderson’s got a pretty good idea of what to expect when he heads to the comms room to answer Shepard’s call. It doesn’t stop his face from breaking into a smile when he sees Nihlus there, head bent in quiet conference with his captain.</p><p>“Nihlus!” He exclaims, and Nihlus turns to flare his mandibles in the turian equivalent of a smile.</p><p>“David,” he says, more reserved, and offers his hand for Anderson to grab. Anderson taps the back of his hand with his own, and the two of them quickly run through the sequence of high-fives and fist taps they’d come up with in a cell on Andrubar, a physical passcode to confirm that the other was present of their own free will.</p><p>When they’re done, Anderson claps Nihlus on the back, and turns to Shepard, who is watching them with barely concealed amusement.</p><p>“You didn’t tell me that Nihlus was going to be joining us,” he says.</p><p>“I thought you’d enjoy the surprise,” Shepard replies.</p><p>“I asked her not to,” Nihlus says, rolling his eyes. “I am here on behalf of the council.”</p><p>His body language shifts, from one friend greeting another to something more serious.</p><p>“They’re preparing to offer humanity a chance to prove themselves capable of joining the galactic community on a greater scale. I am here to evaluate you, Anderson, for spectre candidacy. This will be the first of several missions together. It must be said, Anderson, that I am evaluating you as an equal, not as a friend. If I don’t find that you’re ready-”</p><p>“You will,” Anderson says, firmly. He’s been on enough missions with Nihlus and Saren that he knows exactly what they’re looking for from him. He knows he’s capable of performing on that level.</p><p>“Glad to hear it,” Nihlus says. “Now, about the mission...”</p><p>-</p><p>Anderson’s not anticipating any particular trouble picking up the beacon. That said, he can’t resist the urge to tease Nihlus a bit when he says he’ll scout ahead.</p><p>“You sure?” Anderson says.</p><p>“I move faster on my own,” Nihlus tells him, raising his browplates in an expression of skepticism he almost certainly picked up from the humans.</p><p>“You also get captured faster,” Anderson points out. “Remember Adailla?”</p><p>Nihlus flares his mandibles at him, baring sharp teeth in amusement. “Are you worried about me, or yourself? You don’t do much better at solo missions.”</p><p>“Name <em>one</em> time-”</p><p>“Kal’kesh.”</p><p>“I thought we agreed not to talk about Kal’kesh,” Anderson grumbles.</p><p>“<em>You </em>agreed not to talk about Kal’kesh,” Nihlus says. “I made no such promises.”</p><p>“You’ve been spending too much time with Shepard,” Anderson mutters. “Alright, if you’re sure, Nihlus. I’m never letting you live it down if we beat you to the beacon.”</p><p>“How are you planning on doing that?” Nihlus asks. “I’ve got a head start.”</p><p>He raises a hand in farewell, and hops out of the dropship, moving lightfooted across the lush green surface of Eden Prime.</p><p>“Asshole,” Anderson says, fondly. He’s not really worried about Nihlus - even with pirates and the possibility of geth, he knows the man’s skills. He’ll be fine.</p><p>-</p><p>“You’re <em>sure</em> he said Saren?”</p><p>Anderson knows his tone is too harsh to use with civilians. He can’t being himself to care. Not with his hands coated in Nihlus’ blue blood, not when the dockworker is saying Saren killed him. Alenko and Williams are looking at him oddly.</p><p>“That’s what he said,” the dockworker insists.</p><p>They’d arrived too late to help him. Judging by the amount of blood, Nihlus had been beyond help since the shot had been fired. Still, Anderson couldn’t help wondering what would have happened if they’d been a little faster. If he hadn’t stopped to talk to the survivors of the attack, if he’d been a little less cautious when taking down the geth drones. If he’d been early enough to try and get some medi-gel on the wound.</p><p>Nihlus had survived so much before this - so many missions Anderson would have sworn they would never have made it out of alive. It felt unfair that he would die here, on what was basically a milk run.</p><p>He wishes that he’d been able to persuade Nihlus to go together.</p><p>“Alenko,” he says, kneeling down to make sure that Nihlus’ eyes are shut. “Can you get any footage from the dock security cameras? Confirm that it was another turian that shot him?”</p><p>“Sure,” Alenko says, too polite to express the confusion that Anderson can hear in his voice.</p><p>Williams has no such qualms. “With all due respect, sir, why do you care?”</p><p>“Why do I care about what?” Anderson asks. He’s still kneeling by Nihlus’ side. They’re going to have to get up eventually, hunt down the geth and retrieve the beacon, but he can’t make his legs move just yet.</p><p>“Who shot him. If this Saren guy-”</p><p>“I know Saren.” Anderson says, shortly. “I knew him, at least. He wouldn’t do this. He- if there was even one person in the galaxy that he cared about-”</p><p>Anderson’s voice breaks.</p><p>“Alright,” Williams says, her voice more gentle, suddenly. “I believe you.”</p><p>But the footage is damning- it was Saren that shot Nihlus. Nihlus recognized him before the end. He even said that the mission would be easier, now that Saren was with him.</p><p>The irony was painful.</p><p>-</p><p>Shepard takes them to the Citadel, after.</p><p>The broken beacon, at least, needs to be delivered to the Citadel. Shepard wants to report to the council, too. The only people who can bring Spectres to justice are other Spectres - and if the footage wasn’t lying, then Saren badly needs to be brought to justice. Anderson guesses she’s going to ask to be involved in the hunt.</p><p>He can’t blame her. She’s dry-eyed and cold as ever, but she knew Nihlus as well as Anderson did. She has to be itching to figure out why Saren did this. </p><p>As it turns out, Saren beats them to the council chambers.</p><p>Before Udina can try to smooth things over, before Anderson can state his case, Shepard speaks up. Anderson suspects she’s not thinking about the words, that they escaped her before she could think them through.</p><p>“Arterius,” she says, her voice almost playful. “What the hell happened to your face?”</p><p>Anderson can see what she’s talking about. Even through the relatively low-resolution hologram, he can see the metal plating Saren’s mandibles. Sharp and jagged, like he’s tried to attach more teeth to his face. There’s something wrong with his arm too, metallic tubing running between it and his shoulder.</p><p>It looks- worrying. Worrying is really the only word Anderson can think of to describe it.</p><p>“I don’t see how that is relevant to the discussion,” Saren says, clipped and dismissive. That’s familiar, at least. Anderson has seen them do a variation of this dance every time Shepard expresses concern for him.</p><p>Usually, Anderson thinks, swallowing hard, that happens at Nihlus’ instigation.</p><p>“I thought that you might prefer to get the pleasantries out of the way first,” Shepard says, and her tone is noticeably cooler. “Since the rest of this discussion is going to be unpleasant. Why were you on Eden Prime, Saren?”</p><p>“I was not,” Saren says, dismissively. “I had no reason to be. Your attempts to deflect responsibility for your destruction of the beacon only-”</p><p>“<em>Fuck</em> the beacon,” Anderson snaps, tired of being quiet and watching Saren bullshit, “Why did you kill Nihlus?”</p><p>Saren doesn’t quite flinch from the words, but the way he looks at Anderson is expressive. Scathing and cold and a little bit shocked - he was clearly not anticipating the question.</p><p>“Was it an accident?” Shepard asks, her voice deceptively gentle. “If it was, Saren, you owe it to his memory- to his spirit to come clean. You can’t say that you’re fit to serve after something like that.”</p><p>“I did <em>not</em> kill my protegee,” Saren snaps, defensive - almost shaken. “And I dislike your tone, human. You have no right to speak so familiarly with me.”</p><p>Anderson’s eyebrows rise without his consent. That’s a new one- as far as he could tell, Saren <em>liked</em> it when Shepard was overly familiar with him. He shoots a glance over at Shepard.</p><p>For the first time in the conversation, she’s frowning.</p><p>“Saren,” she asks, carefully. “What is my name?”</p><p>Anderson’s eyes widen. He glances between Shepard, her expression getting stonier by the second, to Saren’s face.</p><p>The turian looks - confused. It’s not obvious, but if you know Saren - and sadly Anderson does - it’s easy to pick the emotion out of the way he’s holding himself, the way his face is set.</p><p>“That’s not relevant to the discussion either,” he says, trying for haughty and missing. “Your name was not in the report. There is no reason that I should know it.”</p><p><em>Oh shit</em>, Anderson thinks. He glances over at Shepard. Behind her back, she’s grabbing her wrist in one hand. Her fingers are trembling.</p><p>“You don’t recall meeting her before?” the salarian councilor pipes up. His voice makes Shepard flinch - she must have forgotten, like Anderson had, that there were other people in the room.</p><p>“No,” Saren says, flatly. “I see no reason why I should.”</p><p>“I think that we’re done here,” says the asari councilor, and she ends Saren’s call.</p><p>The room is silent for a moment, the implications of Saren’s words ringing heavily in the chamber.</p><p>“I believe that’s enough evidence,” Shepard says, her voice admirably calm, “to indicate that Saren is experiencing-” she stops, swallows, “some sort of loss of continuity. As such, I request that his spectre status be revoked.”</p><p>“The death of Nihlus is concerning,” the turian councilor says. “You say you have evidence that Saren did it?”</p><p>Wordlessly, Anderson forwards the recording to the council’s projector.</p><p>-</p><p>After the meeting is over, Anderson catches Shepard in the antechamber. Udina’s already on his way, bustling off to the human embassy.</p><p>“Is this alright?” he asks, and stops.</p><p>There’s no way to as if she’s okay with him taking the ship and crew that was supposed to be hers, him easily getting the position that she lost so much trying for. The title of first human spectre hangs in the air, heavy and terrible.</p><p>To his surprise, Shepard smiles at him. It’s one of the rare times the expression looks genuine on her face, soft and fond in a way he’s only seen it once or twice before.</p><p>“Anderson,” she says, gently. “David. I think it’s past time that I kicked you out of the nest. You were ready for a ship of your own years ago, we both know it. The Normandy is the perfect ship for the first human spectre.”</p><p>“You’re not- unhappy? That it’s not going to be you?” Anderson watches her, keeping a careful eye out for any sign of a lie.</p><p>“That’s a younger woman’s game,” Shepard says, simply. “More than that - David, you’ll do humanity proud. I know you will. I wasn’t the right person for that job. You are. You will be. I know it.”</p><p>Carefully, telegraphing the motion in the way she rarely does, Shepard sets her hands on Anderson’s shoulders and pulls him in for a hug. Anderson presses his face to her shoulder, and hugs her back, trying not to let the tears stinging his eyes show. Shepard doesn’t give compliments, usually. If she’s saying it now - she must think he needs it.</p><p>“You should be the one going after Saren, at least,” Anderson says, when he pulls back, swiping awkwardly at his eyes. Shepard, looking a little watery herself, shakes her head.</p><p>“If I’m being honest with you,” she says, “I can get more done from the Citadel. I’ve got more contacts groundside, and more time to spend on tracking him down when I’m not busy running a ship.”</p><p>She takes a deep breath, and the hard edge returns to her expression.</p><p>“We’ll find him,” she says, firmly. “I promise you that.”</p><p>“And the Reapers?” Anderson gives her a look. She’d not been happy about him mentioning them to the council.</p><p>“I hope the council is right,” Shepard says, grimly. “That the way the protheans went extinct is only interesting to archaeologists.”</p><p>“It doesn’t feel like that,” Anderson mutters.</p><p>Shepard sighs. “I’d prefer an enemy we can fight. Whatever killed the protheans- it’s got to be way more advanced than we are.”</p><p>Anderson- can’t blame her for that, actually.</p><p>“I’ll bring Saren to justice,” Anderson says, bringing the conversation back. “For Nihlus.”</p><p>“For Nihlus,” Shepard says, firmly. “Now, go track down Barla Von. If I find any more leads for you, I’ll pass them along.”</p><p>Anderson nods, and turns towards the exit of the tower. He’s got a lot of work ahead of him.</p><p>———</p><p>It takes nearly five years, but Saren eventually gets a straight answer as to why Shepard invests the time and energy she does into keeping him alive.</p><p>“What are you brooding about now?” Shepard says, around her lollipop.</p><p>They are sitting in her apartment. Shepard is a more reliable resource for stitches than most of the hospitals on the Citadel, and she doesn’t insist on keeping him overnight when he’s being pursued by an asari cartel. He is not being pursued this time. But he is tired, and Shepard won’t kick him out. He’s wound up at her apartment more often than he would like to admit.</p><p>Very technically, he supposes he could deal with the problem himself, or perhaps visit the branch of the Arterius family that resides on the Citadel. They’ve got an in-house doctor, and they would be more than willing to accept him.</p><p>But he dislikes troubling them. The conversation there is so very - civilian, is the only word he can think for it.</p><p>“I fail to see how you benefit from this,” Saren says, shutting his eyes so that he can’t see the way her lips curve around the candy.</p><p>“Not surprising,” Shepard snickers, “your imagination sucks. Perhaps I just like to save you.”</p><p>“You’re not saving me,” Saren corrects her.</p><p>“You keep telling yourself that,” Shepard says, in the manner he’s sure she thinks of as agreeable.</p><p>They lapse into silence. Saren can hear the faint whirring of the power to her apartment, the soft wet sound of her breathing. When he opens his eyes, she’s looking at him.</p><p>“Is it a debt then?” He asks, looking away from her so that he will not meet her eyes. “Someone did this for you, and you repay them by trying to help me.”</p><p>“Of course not, Arterius,” Shepard replies, “don’t be naive. In our line of work, no one’s that generous.”</p><p>Except for you, Saren thinks, and promptly tries to erase the thought from his mind. She’s not saving anything. It’s simply convenient, to take advantage of the help that she offers him.</p><p>“I survived black ops on my own,” Shepard muses, “and with no expectation that there’d be anyone to come for me if I needed help.”</p><p>Saren suppresses a sharp stab of revulsion at the words. Perhaps that is why she wants this arrangements, so there will be someone to rescue her if she gets in over her head. He supposes it’s not as objectionable as any of the other reasons she might have had for helping him.</p><p>“Is that what this is, then?” Saren asks. “Insurance?”</p><p>“Not even,” Shepard retorts. “I still don’t expect gratitude from you. No, Saren, you remind me of me.”</p><p>Saren blinks at her. He didn’t think that they’d had much in common.</p><p>“Saving you,” she says, “is almost like saving myself.”</p><p>“Except,” Saren says, coldly, “that I don’t need saving.”</p><p>Shepard looks at him for a long, long moment.</p><p>“You say that now,” she says, her face splitting into a predatory grin, “but someday, Saren, you’ll want me to save you bad enough to ask.”</p><p>“And what?” Saren asks, derisively, “You’ll deny me, and get your revenge?”</p><p>Shepard laughs at him. “If we’re talking revenge, Saren, I think it’d be worse for you if I didn’t. You know as well as I do, that if you need me, I’ll be here.”</p><p>Saren turns to look at her. Shepard tilts her head, her body language open. It’s not- quite a come on. But it is an offer, a clear one. If he reached out, she would let him touch her.</p><p>Saren balls his fists against the temptation.</p><p>It’s not his responsibility to care if the human has a crush. He can take advantage of the opportunities it affords him without indulging her. Shepard won’t push the issue.</p><p>He doesn’t care to continue their conversation.</p><p>———</p><p>After Noveria, after the debrief with the crew and the call with the council, Liara stops Anderson before he can dismiss them.</p><p>“I wanted to ask,” she says, “about your mentor. She didn’t seem happy about Benezia.”</p><p>Anderson fights the urge to groan. He knows what Liara’s talking about, and he doesn’t want to get into this. Explaining the ins and outs of what Shepard wanted out of that confrontation would get much, much further into her personal business than he wants to share with people she doesn’t know.</p><p>But, on the other hand, he can’t be sure that the whole mess with her and Saren isn’t going to be relevant to the mission. Little as he likes it, this mission is tangled up in Shepard’s whole thing with Saren, and the way it shaped Anderson’s career. He’s got an intuition that his friendship with Nihlus isn’t going to be the only thing they’ll need to know about before the end.</p><p>“Fine,” Anderson says. “But what I’m about to tell you doesn’t leave this room. Clear?”</p><p>He glances over the rest of his crew. Garrus, Tali, and Ashley nod. Kaidan salutes.</p><p>Wrex rumbles, “Crystal.”</p><p>Anderson takes a deep breath. “Shepard and Saren were, uh, close. More than friends, but not quite lovers.”</p><p>He resists the urge to make a face. He hates putting the words Shepard, Saren, and lovers in the same sentence. Thinking about either of them adjacent to sex was gross.</p><p>“I thought Saren hated humans,” Kaidan says.</p><p>“Hence the not-quite,” Anderson says. “Shepard put her species first. Always.”</p><p> “Are you sure you should be telling us this, Skipper?” Ashley asks, frowning at him. “I don’t think she’d want you airing her personal business like this.”</p><p>“She wouldn’t, no,” Anderson sighs. “But this whole mission is - personal. To both of us. It’s going to be relevant.”</p><p>“Both of you?” Garrus asks, his eyes going sharp. “I can see why your mentor would find it personal, but you too?”</p><p>“Their whole thing was tied up in the jobs from beginning to end,” Anderson says. “As Shepard’s protegee, I got a front row seat.”</p><p>He sighs.</p><p>“That’s how I met Nihlus. When Shepard and Saren worked together, we came with. He was a hell of a lot easier to talk to than either of them, so we wound up working as a team more often than not. He was my friend. And Saren-”</p><p>Anderson stops. Thinking about Saren is hard.</p><p>“I take it he wasn’t your friend,” Wrex rumbles, almost mockingly.</p><p>“He wasn’t,” Anderson says, flatly. “He was a mean old bastard, and he was meaner to me than most.” Anderson shut his eyes. “But,” he confesses, “he’d have taken a bullet for me, if only because he thought he owed it to Shepard. And for every time she taught Nihlus to hack a datapad or hotwire a taxi, he’d train me on my assault rifle or on his shotgun. In some ways, he was my mentor too.”</p><p>It’s hard, Anderson thinks, to grieve for someone who you never liked, and who never liked you. But Saren had been a part of his life, a cranky constant that he’d never thought he would miss. And now, the man he’d known, disliked, and grudgingly respected was gone, leaving a stranger behind in his body.</p><p>“He forgot you too,” Liara says, softly. “I heard that he had forgotten Shepard, but I didn’t realize...”</p><p>“Yeah,” Anderson says. He doesn’t want to know what his voice sounds like, whether it’s as calm as he wants it to be, or whether some fragment of the mixed emotions that he’s feeling shows in his tone. Shepard would have ended the meeting there, not interested in being emotional around anyone else.</p><p>Anderson has something more to say.</p><p>“The purpose of this mission is to bring Saren to justice,” he says, firmly. “And to prevent him from unleashing his geth army. But - I want him to remember. I want him to understand why it matters that I’m the one to stop him. I won’t let it interfere with the mission, but I’m not going to give up on him.”</p><p>Anderson glances around the room, but no one seems to object to that. Wrex, in fact, is giving him a look of faint approval for the first time since Anderson met him.</p><p>“Dismissed,” Anderson says, and most of them leave.</p><p>Liara lingers, looking worried.</p><p>“You were very interested in finding Benezia,” she says. “Did you think-?”</p><p>Anderson sighs. “Well, Shepard and Saren were - something. Then he runs off with some asari and forgets all about her. It’s easy to make assumptions. To think that it might not have been his fault, after all.”</p><p>“Melding cannot erase memories,” Liara says, reprovingly.</p><p>“It was the easy conclusion,” Anderson admits, “not the right one.”</p><p>Liara steps closer, looking almost like she wants to reach out to him. “I understand,” she says, “grief can make things- different. I lost my mother long before this mission, so I cannot grieve her now, but it would have been- easier. If there had been someone to blame.”</p><p>“Yeah,” Anderson agrees. “Was that all?”</p><p>“Well,” Liara says, “I was curious. The nature of your mentor’s relationship with Saren seems- complicated. Asari believe that we can understand any person through their connections to others. Can you tell me more about what was between the two of them?”</p><p>———</p><p>A year before Saren - goes nuclear is the only expression that comes to mind - all four of them meet up in a bar.</p><p>Nihlus is well established as his own spectre by that point, and Saren’s had several trainees come and go after him. All the same, Nihlus is the only one Anderson really knows. He suspects, and Shepard does too, that Saren’s been keeping the more recent ones out of their way. Perhaps he thinks the two of them are a bad influence.</p><p>Anderson’s pretty sure that’s the biggest compliment the old bastard could possibly give him.</p><p>Anyways, the bar.</p><p>It’s a seedy little place, set up on a cold, dark planetoid at the edge of the Terminus Systems. Anderson guesses it’s for some kind of anniversary. Shepard had just informed him that they were going, not bothering to acknowledge that there might be a reason that they were meeting up. That, in Shepard-speak, means she’s embarrassed about it.</p><p>Nihlus agrees - he’d spent more time trying to get a straight answer out of Saren than Anderson had - and apparently the other Spectre had gotten flustered. The two of them snicker about that, heads bent together firmly out of earshot of either of their mentors.</p><p>Said mentors aren’t paying any attention to them. Shepard has dragged Saren out onto the nearly-empty dance floor and is spinning him around it, looking happy in the way she only does when someone else is suffering. Anderson’s not entirely competent at reading turian expressions, but he guesses that the look on Saren’s face is somewhere between excruciating embarrassment and murderous rage. He’s not trying to fight her off, though, and his hands are only about an inch above her waist. Which means, in turian body language, that he’s about an inch from touching Shepard somewhere definitely inappropriate for a public dance floor.</p><p>“Do you think if I set something on fire, they’d stop?” Anderson’s hand inches towards the bottle of nearly 100-proof alcohol on the table.</p><p>Nihlus picks the bottle up and moves it out of Anderson’s reach. “Yes,” Nihlus says, but because he’s a killjoy, he adds, “and then the fire would consume all the oxygen in the habitation dome and we’d have to evacuate it. And you’d get us all banned from the bar. Shepard would be disappointed in you.”</p><p>Anderson grumbles something indistinguishable and sets his head on the table. Nihlus leaves him be until he doesn’t, reaching sharp turian claws out to poke Anderson on the cheek.</p><p>Anderson swats his hand away. “What was that for?” he says, tipping his head to look at Nihlus.</p><p>“Humans are squishy,” Nihlus says, having the good grace to look abashed.</p><p>Anderson makes a face at him. “You’re drunk,” he points out. Normally Nihlus is very respectful of his personal space. “Anyways, it’s rude to call people squishy. Do you do that to your asari friends?”</p><p>“My only asari friend is another Spectre,” Nihlus says. “She’d rip my arm out of my socket if I tried to poke her.”</p><p>“I could rip your arm out of your socket,” Anderson mutters. “If I wanted to.”</p><p>“You could try,” Nihlus says, with cheerful arrogance. “If you would even hurt me in the first place - and I don’t think you would.”</p><p>Anderson has to concede that point. He’s too nice.</p><p>“Speaking of Spectres,” Nihlus starts.</p><p>Anderson groans and puts his head back down on the table. He knows how this is going to go.</p><p>Nihlus continues, undeterred. “You should apply for Spectre candidacy.”</p><p>“That’s never going to happen,” Anderson says. “You know it as well as I do.”</p><p>“Come on, David,” Nihlus coaxes, leaning down to try and make eye contact. “You can’t be Shepard’s second forever.”</p><p>“I don’t know how things work in the turian military,” Anderson says, “but I am very young for an executive officer. It wouldn’t be unusual if this was as far as I rose in the Alliance ranks.”</p><p>“You say that as though you aren’t an exceptional officer in your own right,” Nihlus says. “It’d be a waste for your career to stall out here.”</p><p>“Not everything is about the career,” Anderson grumbles, the surface of the table sticking to his cheek. “I’m doing enough good for the Alliance where I am.”</p><p>Working with Shepard is just about perfect for that, actually. It seems like every other mission is something exciting, saving colonies or hunting down pirates. He’s almost never bored, but they’re far enough out in the Terminus systems that they’re insulated from the politics and politicians of ordinary Alliance deployments. And if there’s any politicking to be had, it’s very much Shepard’s problem.</p><p>He’ll move on, eventually, captain his own ship. But he can see himself staying where he is for several more years, at least long enough that other officers stop calling him a kid.</p><p>“You could be doing more, though,” Nihlus prods.</p><p>“The council would never let humanity have a Spectre,” Anderson grumbles. “That’d be too much like adding a human councilor.”</p><p>“There’s no guarantee that one would lead to the other,” Nihlus says, cheerfully. “Anyways, humanity’s star is rising. You’ve earned the chance to prove yourselves.”</p><p>“Ugh,” Anderson says. Politics.</p><p>“You’re good enough to be a Spectre,” Nihlus says. “Don’t you think so, Saren?”</p><p>Anderson sits up. Saren has drifted back over to their table, apparently done dancing. Shepard’s standing at the bar, ordering drinks.</p><p>Anderson looks at Saren. Saren looks at him, his cold blue eyes assessing. Anderson is acutely aware of the way the table surface left a sticky residue on his cheek, the beer he spilled on his shirt earlier in the evening.</p><p>“You,” Saren pronounces, “might make an adequate Spectre. After several years of training.”</p><p>Anderson’s jaw drops a little. Over Saren’s shoulder, Nihlus’ mandibles flare with shock.</p><p>“I think that’s the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me,” Anderson says, dumbly.</p><p>“Spirits,” Nihlus agrees, leaning close to Saren to look at his face. “He’s right. Are you drunk? I don’t think you’ve ever even called <em>me</em> adequate.”</p><p>“I take it back,” says Saren, who does indeed seem to be drunk. “You are both terrible. Nihlus, you are a walking insult to the dignity of our profession.”</p><p>“Love you too,” Nihlus snickers, and dodges Saren’s instinctive swat at him.</p><p>Anderson glances over Saren’s shoulder to where Shepard is heading back from the bar. She smiles at him, faintly distracted. There’s a smear of purple lipstick above her cheekbone.</p><p>“The bartender’s cute,” she reports, dropping the drinks on the table.</p><p>Saren’s fist snaps closed, his body language going from relaxed to tense in an instant.</p><p>“No one wants to hear about your conquests, Shepard,” he hisses.</p><p>“What?” Shepard asks, false casual and a nasty smile playing about her lips. “Jealous? It’s not my fault no one gives you their number.”</p><p>The two of them lock eyes for a long, incredibly awkward moment, and then Saren stands and downs his drink.</p><p>“The council is waiting on a report,” he says, curtly, and storms off.</p><p>-</p><p>“What was that for?” Nihlus demands, as soon as Saren is out of earshot.</p><p>Shepard looks at him, her eyes edging on dangerous. She makes as though to get up, and Anderson clears his throat.</p><p>“Uh,” he says, “that didn’t look good, Shepard.”</p><p>She looks back at him, faintly surprised, but settles back in her chair.</p><p>“Are we actually having this conversation?” she asks. “I thought it was unprofessional to get involved in your colleagues’ love lives.”</p><p>“Shepard,” Anderson says, “if you’re trying to get us to back off, the raging hypocrisy doesn’t help.”</p><p>Shepard snorts, and raises her glass to him. “Point taken,” she says. “Lay it on me.”</p><p>“You know he has-” Nihlus stops, pausing to search for a word. “Feelings,” he settles on. “For you. I know you do.”</p><p>Shepard doesn’t say anything. She’s watching Nihlus intently.</p><p>“And the two of you are allies,” Nihlus says, “no matter what he might say. You shouldn’t use that against him. If you’re not interested in him - you could just let it go.”</p><p>“And if I was interested?” Shepard’s voice doesn’t change, but Anderson snaps his head around to look at her anyways. This is the closest he’s ever gotten to a straight answer from her on the subject of her feelings for Saren, and it is not the one he thought he’d hear.</p><p>“Then-” Nihlus is looking at her strangely. “Couldn’t the two of you just-?”</p><p>He makes a vaguely obscene gesture into the air between them.</p><p>Shepard laughs, but it’s a cold, empty noise. She lifts her glass and drains it, setting it back down on the table.</p><p>“Nihlus,” she says, “I can’t think of a faster way to send him running.”</p><p>Nihlus doesn’t seem to know what to say to that. He shoots Anderson a look, and Anderson looks back, helpless. He’s got a suspicion as to where this conversation is going, and he knows that Nihlus isn’t going to like it.</p><p>“He <em>hates</em> humanity,” Shepard says, toying with the empty glass. “And, in case you haven’t noticed, I am human. He can barely think of the two of us as friends - if we ever wound up as more, I think he’d rather cut off our friendship entirely than think of himself as a xenophile.”</p><p>“So,” Nihlus says, “earlier - that was about punishing him for that?”</p><p>Shepard makes a disgusted noise. “Yes. No. Somewhat.”</p><p>“Then what was it about?” Nihlus is watching her intently.</p><p>“If I said it was because it is somewhat <em>frustrating</em>, to be interested in someone who wants you back but will never make a move, would you believe me?”</p><p>“Is it true?” Nihlus counters.</p><p>“Sure,” Shepard says. “I’m frustrated with him. With myself.”</p><p>“Yourself?” Nihlus asks, and Anderson can tell she’s confused him.</p><p>Shepard sighs, and grabs the bottle of liquor from the table. She takes a swig directly from the mouth, making a face as it goes down.</p><p>“Yep,” she mutters. “Because if all I wanted was sex, we could have fucked by now and been done with it. But I don’t want - fuck, this is stupid.” She takes another drink from the bottle, her expression twisted as though she hates the taste of the words she’s saying.</p><p>“I’m the only connection he has to the world outside of black ops,” she says, “the only reminder he’s got that his career doesn’t have to end in him bleeding out for the council. And I’d rather he have that, than I have whatever gratification I’d get from having sex.”</p><p>She sets the bottle down on the table.</p><p>“For what it’s worth,” she adds, “I’d also rather have the friendship than the- gratification. So there’s no point in acting like there’s anything between us. I’m never going to change things - and neither is he.”</p><p>“I don’t think you’re giving him enough credit,” says Nihlus. “He might-”</p><p>“Then why hasn’t he made a move?” Shepard raises an eyebrow at him. “He could do it just as well as I can. And if he doesn’t know that I’d accept it, I’ll eat the bottle.”</p><p>Nihlus doesn’t seem to have much to say to that.</p><p>“Don’t worry,” Shepard says, slightly softer, “I’ll make up with him. And I won’t do it again. I won’t let this change anything.”</p><p>She stands, the chair scraping the floor, and turns on her heel to follow Saren out of the bar.</p><p>“Christ,” says Anderson, as soon as she’s out of earshot. That’s almost more emotion out of Shepard than he’s seen in the entire time they’ve worked together.</p><p>“Spirits,” Nihlus agrees, and drops his head to the table. “Why does everything have to be <em>complicated</em>?”</p><p>Anderson doesn’t have an answer for that question. He suspects that Shepard doesn’t have one either.</p><p>———</p><p>The last night before Saren goes to Sovereign, he’s on the Citadel.</p><p>He hasn’t yet made up his mind to work with the reaper. Objectively, he’s aware that there’s no reason not to. Regardless of what he does, the Reapers will arrive soon. Whatever he can do to soften the blow - it has to be better than the toll the fight will take on the galaxy at large.</p><p>The question has been occupying the back of his mind for weeks, disrupting his thoughts and making him irritable. He feels stretched thin, scraped dry. Walking the Citadel does nothing to help. Watching the citizens of the galactic heart scurry past, like insects unaware of the boot about to crush them, like pyjacks unable to comprehend a meaning greater than the small realities of their daily existence, does nothing to improve his mood.</p><p>There was a message from the Arterius family on his datapad yesterday, an invitation to a family gathering. He remembers looking forward to them, before he realized that no one who attended them understood the realities of the world around them. There is no point to socializing - his infamous abilities have paid them back and more the social capital they spent to get him here.</p><p>Saren descends through the wards, watching their residents scurry by him, trying to feel anything for them other than contempt. It doesn’t work - there aren’t any emotions left to him, after a lifetime’s worth of spending himself to protect them.</p><p>There’s a hotel, down on Zakera. A gaudy thing, striped with red and blue neon, towering above the streets like an ugly, blunt obelisk. When he steps through its doors, shutting his eyes against the oppressively loud music and holographic decorations, the receptionist greets him by name.</p><p>“She’s on the eighteenth floor,” she chirps. She’s asari, unusually dark blue, almost violet. No combat experience, not a threat.</p><p>Saren inclines his head, hollow politeness too ingrained to matter, and steps past her towards the elevator. The eighteenth floor of the hotel is as dark blue as the rest of the building, lit with striped purple neon.</p><p>He contemplates the pointlessness of this, as he makes his way towards the door at the end of the hallway and knocks. Of all the meaningless rituals of organic life that he is forced to participate in, this one makes the least sense. He has to eat and sleep to remain functional - but this has no relation to his purpose. No effect on his ability to defend the citizens of the galaxy.</p><p>The door clicks open, and Shepard is standing in the doorway. She’s got a towel wrapped around her neck, the red fluff of her hair dark and limp against her skull from water. She smiles at him, baring blunt human teeth. She’s unarmed, unarmored - it would be so easy to simply stop her existence here.</p><p>“You look like shit, Saren,” she says, with an amused lilt to her voice. She stands back from the door to invite him in.</p><p>This is a waste of time, he knows. Shepard will have no information for him, or at least none that she’s willing to give. She’s hardly worth the title of informant, there will barely be a pretext of exchange. He will spend hours here and gain nothing from it - no progress, no solutions.</p><p>But he goes in anyways, and settles himself on her couch.</p><p>Shepard throws something at him. He snatches it out of the air, and sighs when he does. A dextro protein pack, in the awful keleven flavor she insists on getting.</p><p>“I’m not going to ask about the last time you ate,” she informs him. “I can tell the answer will be depressing.”</p><p>Saren can’t remember, which he supposes is depressing by default. It’s useless to argue with Shepard about these things.</p><p>“Tomorrow,” she says, settling beside him on the couch, “you’re buying me breakfast. We’ll go to Igniax.”</p><p>She’s expecting him to argue with her about Igniax - he hates the place. He might indulge her, normally, but today all he can think to say is:</p><p>“I can’t stay that long. I have work to do.”</p><p>“Call Nihlus,” Shepard says, an edge to her voice. “I know for a fact he’s in between missions - and even if he wasn’t, you wouldn’t waste time here if you were in the middle of something. You can spare a few more hours.”</p><p>He can’t. Can he? Time feels loose, muddy. He’s not been on a mission in too long, but there’s so much left to do.</p><p>Saren shuts his eyes.</p><p>“Have you been sleeping?” Shepard asks, her voice pitched a little softer.</p><p>“No,” he says. It’s an easy confession to make. He’s too tired to think of a lie.</p><p>“Shit,” she mutters. “We’re talking about this when you wake up.”</p><p>Saren wants to protest that he’s not going to sleep, but the world is blurring around him. His eyes shut without his permission, and he’s gone.</p><p>-</p><p>Saren wakes up scant hours before the Citadel’s simulated dawn. He’s got a headache and a crick in his neck - he slept with it hanging loosely down. There’s something heavy and uncomfortably hot on his shoulder.</p><p>He turns his stiff neck to look at it, not surprised to see Shepard leaning against his shoulder. Her bare skin is hot even through two layers of fabric, and the lines of his shirt have pressed red marks into her face. She’s covered in a sheet from the overlarge bed and she’s draped another one of them over him.</p><p>Saren peels the sheet off of his shoulders, detangling himself from the unwieldy fabric. Shepard is rolled in her sheet like some sort of human pastry, but she’s left an arm outside of it, her palm resting on the couch next to his thigh.</p><p>Human skin always rather disturbed Saren. It’s blood-hot to the touch in a way that is unmistakably alien, and it has a tendency to deform like overripe fruit when touched with any sort of force. He makes an effort not to touch humans, even when killing them. The sensation is too unpleasant.</p><p>It means something, he’s sure, that Shepard is willing to sleep near him. That she chose to, in fact, sitting with him rather than lying down on the bed, even though it must have been less comfortable. It speaks to foolishness, to trust, to other things better not contemplated. It makes the awful, cawing voice of his primordial hindbrain cry for more.</p><p>That voice is one of the deeper flaws of the organic mind, he thinks. It irrationally hates Sovereign, it cries for attention from people better left undisturbed, it calls for food, for sleep-</p><p>Surely, it will not be much longer until Sovereign silences it forever.</p><p>Carefully, he lifts his hand from his lap and lays it over Shepard’s.</p><p>The motion causes her to stir. She blinks open eyes, wary for a half-second before she notices him watching and smooths out her impression into a smug smile.</p><p>“Feel better?” she asks. “You still owe me breakfast.”</p><p>In a single, sinuous motion, she tugs herself closer to him, setting her head on his chest and his arm around her shoulder. This is a recent habit, Shepard choosing to drape herself over him. It cannot be comfortable, he thinks, to press herself to armor plating and spiked struts. She does it anyways, as though the closeness is enough to overcome the discomfort. The fingers of one hand have closed themselves in the fabric over his ribcage. Sticking, in the bizarre way that human hands do.</p><p>Saren’s body relaxes without his permission, leaning into the cushions of the couch and into the uncomfortable, boiling heat at his side.</p><p>“I’ll take that for a yes, then,” Shepard says, smugly. It’s the artificial sort of smug, he can tell, a facade over a core of grating concern. “Are we going to discuss your sleep schedule now, or at Igniax?”</p><p>“I don’t need a sleep schedule,” Saren says, trying not to shut his eyes.</p><p>“Now, then?” Shepard shifts, pushing herself off his chest to look him in the eye. “You have to know that the way you’re going can’t be sustained. The turian brain can only go for ten days without sleep before you start damaging it.”</p><p>Organic weakness.</p><p>“And you have to know that this isn’t making you better at defending the galaxy,” Shepard continues. “So, the question is - why aren’t you sleeping?”</p><p>“It’s unnecessary,” says Saren. “A waste of time. As you should know.”</p><p>“You say that like we’re running out,” Shepard sounds disbelieving. “You and I have a few decades of life left in us. Unless, of course, you get yourself killed by sleep deprivation.”</p><p>“What’s the use of a few more decades, if there is no tomorrow?” Saren wonders, “If I do not do my job today, we die to a threat unaddressed.”</p><p>This argument doesn’t seem to impress her.</p><p>“You aren’t the only Spectre in the business, you know,” she says. “There are hundreds of you out there. All of them perfectly capable of doing the job you’re losing sleep to get to.”</p><p>“The council doesn’t see it that way,” Saren argues. “I am their top agent for a reason - because I can do more. Do better. It is my responsibility to protect the galaxy - mine alone.”</p><p>“Maybe it doesn’t have to be,” Shepard says. “Look - I know that you’re not going to want to hear this, but- you can stop. I wouldn’t have done it on my own, but having to stop, to retire - wasn’t actually a bad thing. The Alliance didn’t crumble without me. Humanity kept going forward. And there’s plenty to do with a ship and a crew, almost as much saving the galaxy as you can get done on your own.”</p><p>“I thought you’d tell me to get out entirely,” Saren says, amused.</p><p>“I don’t think you’re the type to retire to a beach on Thessia,” Shepard retorts. “You can even just take a break from special ops. The galaxy’s still going to be there if you let it save itself for a few years.”</p><p>The irony of knowing what Sovereign had planned was painful. He imagined telling Shepard that every sentient lifeform in the galaxy was going to be gone or changed within a few years, and quickly discarded it. She would spend too much of herself on defiance that would turn out to be futile. He didn’t want to fight her.</p><p>He did, for a moment, consider the break.</p><p>Would it be so bad, he thought, to spend the scant weeks and months they had left running away from it all? To stop trying to save a galaxy that had never cared to stay saved, and simply lie back to watch it die?</p><p>He had to admit, he was tempted. Just to give up, go get breakfast with Shepard, tell Nihlus he had retired and watch his protegee try to throw a party that Saren wouldn’t immediately try to escape.</p><p>Saren opens his eyes and looks down at Shepard.</p><p>He couldn’t actually take the break. He had a mission to complete, a galaxy to save - and contrary to Shepard’s assertion, no other being in the galaxy is in a position to work with Sovereign. To persuade the reaper to spare at least some of the living beings in it.</p><p>Why then, did Shepard make the idea of leaving seem so tempting?</p><p>As if in answer, an image flickered across his eyelids. Shepard, upgraded to match Sovereign’s design. Glowing artificial light burning through the sockets of her eyes and cracking through the skin of her face. Her limbs, replaced with thousand-jointed metallic facsimiles, her torso riddled with pumps and tubing, her hands icy cold on his skin.</p><p>It made him flinch with revulsion, made the real Shepard lean closer, her face breaking into open concern, one hand reaching for his face. He pushed it away, breathing hard.</p><p>He’d known, on some level, that he was attached to Shepard. But he hadn’t thought through what it might mean - he had assumed he would be able to keep it from affecting his performance. But here he was - hesitating from the most important decision of his career because he didn’t like what it might do to her.</p><p>What would he have said to that, five years ago? What would Desolas have said to that?</p><p>“Saren? Saren!” It sounds like she’s been repeating his name for some time. When she notices that he’s listening, she frowns. “What’s wrong?”</p><p>“Nothing,” he says, and stands, shaking Shepard off his shoulder and making his way towards the door.</p><p>Shepard kicks off her blanket and followed him, bare feet sticking to the tile floor. “You can’t expect me to believe that.”</p><p>Saren turns to face her. Shepard is like an attack varren when she gets it into her head to do something, her jaw locking down on unsuspecting prey and refusing to let go. She will follow him until she gets a satisfactory answer.</p><p>“I need to go,” he says. “I-”</p><p>Shepard leans back on her heels, setting her hands on her hips. “You owe me breakfast.”</p><p>“Next time,” Saren lies. There won’t be a next time, he knows, so there’s no harm in sounding as though he’s looking forward to it.</p><p>Shepard looks over him for a long moment. “I’ll hold you to that,” she says.</p><p>Saren looks back at her. He takes in the red fluff of her hair, the divots of the bones near her throat and at her hips, the fine architecture of her wrists and fingers, the way the blues and pinks of the Citadel sunrise highlight the shape of her face, the shadows in her eyes, the wrinkles in her forehead. He fixes the image of her, watching him like he’s a problem to be picked apart, firmly in his mind.</p><p>Then he turns on his heel and he walks away.</p><p>As long as he has this, the meaningless parody of ordinary life that Shepard offers him, he will hesitate to accept Sovereign’s vision of the galaxy.</p><p>It is no longer something he can keep.</p><p>———</p><p>Shepard breaks out of the C-Sec holding cells the moment the Citadel goes into lockdown.</p><p>It’s not hard - she’s had the override codes ready to deploy since they put her in the cell. They took her omni-tool, but they didn’t do anything about the subdermal hacking device. In the confusion of the attack on the Citadel, no one was bothering to watch a mostly political prisoner.</p><p>And Shepard has no intention of being trapped in a box while the geth tried to take the Citadel.</p><p>She has no idea what happened to Anderson, but if the Citadel is being attacked by geth, he’s failed in his mission to stop Saren.  She hopes that doesn’t mean he’s dead. She can’t afford to worry about him though.</p><p>Right now, stopping Saren is on her.</p><p>She knows him well enough to know where he’s going - he’s trying to take down the Citadel, which means causing chaos. Which means getting rid of the leadership, which means Citadel Tower.</p><p>Getting there is a fucking nightmare, even with the pistol and the shield generator she steals out of the C-Sec armory. First off, the presidium is absolutely crawling with geth. Secondly, the pistol is basic Hahne-Kedar shit and the geth aren’t carrying anything she can use. It means she spends more time than she wants to sneaking from cover to cover, and that the shield generator nearly overloads more than once.</p><p>And, because her luck is shit, by the time she reaches the Citadel Tower, the elevator to the Council Chambers is broken. There’s no stairs, because of course there’s not. Shepard’s first plan would be to blow a hole to the outside of the tower and climb to the Council Chambers from there, but that’s not happening today. Her boots are heavy but not magnetic, and she doesn’t have real armor - which means no helmet and no oxygen supply.</p><p>Shepard eyes the elevator shaft, the flimsy service ladders that only cover maybe half its height and the rough steel cabling of the elevator itself.</p><p>This, she thinks, is going to suck.</p><p>-</p><p>By the time Shepard reaches the Council Chambers, her hands are scraped bloody (she’s never going to take the ablative coating on the palms of her armor for granted again) and her shoulder is scorched from a lucky hit from a geth sniper that got through her shields. She’s starting to have serious doubts about whether she can take down Saren like this.</p><p>But she didn’t get to where she is by being a quitter, so she adjusts her grip on the pistol and carefully wedges her way through one of the antechamber doors. It puts her on one of the shadowed catwalks by the meeting space, out of sight enough that she’s got good sightlines on almost everything in the room. If she can get off a lucky shot-</p><p>She doesn’t finish that thought before gunfire erupts from the mouth of the room, where the elevator comes out. A good deal closer to the Council than where the service exit comes out, she thinks wryly. There’s a knot of geth clustered near the entrance, and beyond them Shepard can see familiar armor.</p><p>Anderson, in an upgraded version of the Hazard armor she last saw him in. And alongside him, the turian he’d picked up and Benezia’s daughter, T’Soni.</p><p>Shepard can’t deny that her chest warms at the sight of them. It’s good, at least, to know that Anderson is still breathing.</p><p>But that leaves the matter of the man that he’s chasing.</p><p>Saren’s advancing towards the council’s control console, his geth throwing themselves at Anderson’s squad to try and delay them.</p><p>He looks even worse in person.</p><p>The arm he’s tacked onto himself, in the context of the whitish mechanical fluids splattered all over her uniform, is obviously geth in origin. More than that, it doesn’t seem to have been modified for organic use at all. From the way Saren is carrying it, it’s too heavy for his comfort. From what she knows of prosthetics, it’s not balanced well - he’ll give himself nerve damage or worse if he keeps using it as is.</p><p>And that’s not getting into the metal that seems to be embedded in his face, or the tubes leading off the arm and plugging into - she hopes they’re plugged into his armor, but she’s got a sinking suspicion that they actually attach to the flesh beneath.</p><p>It’s a wonder none of it has gotten infected yet, Shepard thinks. Even without infection, it’s got to be hurting him.</p><p>Shepard knows the value of her body, from decades of relying on it as her primary weapon. If Saren’s spent halfway as much care on keeping in shape as she has, there’s no way he would do this to himself. He wouldn’t let anyone do it to him either, not willingly. And Saren can put up a hell of a fight.</p><p>Anderson’s theory about reaper mind control is getting more plausible by the second.</p><p>Shepard’s torn between vicious, impotent anger and a colder, more ironic distaste for the wastefulness of it all. Anderson said that Saren thought Sovereign needed him - that it would do this to him is proof that it doesn’t, at least not in the long term. On the other hand, between the arm and the tubing, Saren’s now got half a dozen more weak points than he usually does if she can get into CQC range.</p><p>While she was watching, Anderson cut his way through the remaining geth. Saren’s doing something to the console the council uses to manage the Citadel. She doubts she’s going to be able to stop him just yet, her pistol certainly isn’t going to be able to get through his shields in a single shot. So she skulks closer, waiting for an opportunity.</p><p>“I was afraid you wouldn’t make it in time,” Saren booms.</p><p>Shepard flinches, instinctively, but it seems he’s talking to Anderson, ducked behind some of the flower planters to cover himself from a tech mine.</p><p>“In time for what?” Anderson demands.</p><p>“The final confrontation,” Saren says. “I think we both knew it would end like this. Though it’s a shame your mentor couldn’t make it.”</p><p>Shepard’s tempted to step out, if only because her enemies don’t normally give her lines that good. She suppresses the urge. It’s not time, not yet.</p><p>“What are you talking about?” Anderson snaps. “You don’t even remember her.”</p><p>“I looked at her files,” Saren says, dismissively, “Spectre resources are extensive, as you ought to know. Her record is impressive. Even Sovereign could see it.”</p><p>Well, that’s not creepy at all.</p><p>Anderson shares an expressive look with one of his squadmates, seemingly in agreement.</p><p>“You have impressed it as well,” Saren continues, “Sovereign sees your value. Surrender to the Reapers - to me - and you will be spared.”</p><p>Alright, that is not on. Shepard doesn’t care about creepy reaper interest in her, but when they start going after Anderson they’ve gone too far. Carefully, Shepard slides over the low wall separating the catwalk from the council’s platform, and begins silently padding closer to Saren, who seems distracted entirely by Anderson.</p><p>“Sovereign hasn’t won yet!” Anderson proclaims. “If you stop the upload, it won’t win at all. All you have to do is walk away from the console.”</p><p>Anderson’s eyes flick to her. Shepard shoots him a small, ironic grin. She knows a mission objective when she hears one.</p><p>She raises her pistol and puts three bullets into the console, watching it explode into a shower of sparks and shattered glass.</p><p>“That console?” she asks, stepping out of the shadows.</p><p>Saren turns towards her with a brutal snarl. She levers the pistol at him, ready to fire when he charges her.</p><p>Except, he doesn’t.</p><p>“Shepard?” Saren asks, and he sounds, suddenly lost.</p><p>“Yeah,” Shepard says, letting her pistol fall to her side and stepping closer. She stops when they’re barely an arms-length apart, his head tipped down to focus on her face. There’s something wrong with his eyes, the normally acute blue of them distorted and cloudy. She’s got a bad, bad feeling. “It’s me. Finally realized that Sovereign was using you?”</p><p>“Shepard?” he asks, again. “I remember- no, you can’t be-”</p><p>He makes a sudden, painful noise and puts his hands to his head, as though it’s hurting him.</p><p>“Oh, fuck,” he says. “Shepard.”</p><p>“Still me,” she agrees.</p><p>“Shepard,” he breathes, one more time, “I think- I’ve fucked this up.”</p><p>He looks so dejected, defeated, his hands fisting against his head like it’s tearing him apart. Shepard’s hand rises, instinctively, to push her fingers underneath his organic hand, cradling his skull against her palm. Saren’s fingers close loosely around her wrist, holding her for comfort, not trying to push her away.</p><p>“No shit,” Shepard says, letting her voice go wry and fond. “Can you fight it?”</p><p>“Not much longer,” Saren says, and makes another one of those awful noises, like the pain is crushing the breath out of his chest. “The implants- Sovereign- I’m sorry, Shepard.”</p><p>Shepard opens her mouth, but the words she wants to say won’t quite pass her lips. Her throat feels like it’s closing on her and she bites the inside of her cheek to try and clear it.</p><p>But Saren seems to pick up the gist of it from her face.</p><p>“I’m sorry,” he repeats, “But I have a favor to ask you. Once, years ago, you made me an offer - to forgive every debt between us.”</p><p>“For that, Saren,” she says, her voice coming out softer than she means it to, even as she adjusts her grip on the pistol, “you’d owe me a hell of a lot more than you ever have.”</p><p>“I know,” Saren says, equally softly. “There’s much I won’t be able to pay back - but I think, before we end this, I’d like to try.”</p><p>Shepard, who hadn’t been expecting him to take that seriously, is caught off guard when his hand skates down her arm, wrapping around her waist and pulling her a gentle step closer, until there’s barely an inch of air between them. He’s dropped the geth arm from his head, leaving it hanging limply at his side.</p><p>He tips his head down and presses his forehead to hers. Shepard lets him pull her closer, standing on her tiptoes so he can reach easier. He smells like blood, and metal, and something sickly. She doesn’t want to move away.</p><p>“I wish I’d met you earlier,” he whispers. “I wish we’d gone for breakfast- I was wrong about you, when we first met, Shepard. I’ve known it for years, and I never said it.”</p><p>“Shut up,” Shepard says, trying not to choke on the words. “It’s not the time for any of that.”</p><p>“There’s no time left,” Saren says, and there’s an edge to his voice, like it’s hurting again. “And one more demand to make. Shepard- save me.”</p><p>“Shut up,” Shepard repeats. She slides her hand down his face to adjust the angle of his head. His arm tightens around her waist, pulling her almost off balance as he brings her closer.</p><p>She presses her mouth to his, tasting the alien and metal of him, as they kiss for a single, scant handful of seconds.</p><p>Then, she pulls the trigger.</p><p>Three more bullets, directly into the nerve cluster at the base of his skull, and Shepard stumbles backwards as the deadweight of his body lands on her shoulder. She winds her arm around his back to balance the weight, and sinks to her knees, cradling his head against her chest. She shuts her eyes, takes a hard breath, and then gently pushes him to the floor.</p><p>“Make sure he’s dead,” she orders, as she stands, not quite able to look Anderson in the eye. She drops the pistol at her side, unable to stand touching it any longer. “I need some air.”</p><p>———</p><p>Anderson doesn't tell her what happens once she's gone.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>Writing this fic felt like exorcising a demon, and I'm still not sure I shouldn't have left it in.</p><p>There's a fair amount of stuff that didn't make it into the story, so if you're curious about something, feel free to ask me in the comments. I can almost guarantee I've put thought into it.</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
</body>
</html>